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3Li'r)ing, ©racks 



BEING THE 

EXETER HALL LECTURES ON THE BIBLE 

DELIVERED IN LONDON, ENGLAND 

IN THE MONTHS OF JANUARY, FEBRUARY, MARCH 

AND APRIL, 1903 



By ARTHUR T. PIERSON 



* 






' » 'j * -"^ " '. 



NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO. 
33-37 East Seventeenth St., Union Sc^, North 






LIBRAKV o^ CONGRESS 
Tw« C*pie3 Received 

FEB 29 1904 

'\ Copyright Entry 
CLASS ^ XXc. No. 



Copyright, 1904, by 
The Baker & Taylor Co, 



Printed at 

The American Printing House 

New York, U.S.A. 



A Preliminary Word. 

In January, 1903, the writer of this book was 
asked to undertake what was proposed as a series 
of informal and conversational addresses in lower 
Exeter Hall, in London, before a body of a few 
hundred Christian workers and Bible students, 
accustomed to meet week by week for the study of 
Bible themes, and for further preparation for 
Christian work. The first address was delivered 
in the lower hall, but the available space was 
found so inadequate to the throng which attended, 
as to discourage the hope of increased audiences, 
and it was thought wise to give opportunity for a 
more extended hearing by holding subsequent 
meetings in a larger place; and, with some mis- 
giving, the upper hall was opened for the purpose, 
but, after one or two additional lectures, well filled. 
There was plainly a hunger on the part of many 
for the Word of God, and God had obviously 
planned, unsuspected by man, that there should 
be both accommodation for a larger number of 
hearers, and an amplification of the originally 
proposed lines of address. 



A Preliminary Word 

These lectures were wholly informal, extempor- 
aneous, and without written preparation; but it 
was suggested that they should be preserved and 
made procurable in a book form, and so reach 
many who did not hear them. The impulse of 
the author was to expand the original schemie of 
treatment, and undertake a more extended and 
exhaustive treatise on the theme; but this would 
have made the book too bulky, and almost wholly 
have destroyed the identity between the lectures 
as delivered and as printed. Moreover, the 
design of this discussion was not primarily to 
reach scholars, but rather, the ordinary hearers — 
the common folk. Brevity and simplicity are 
foremost qualities to be sought in such popular 
treatment, and hence, it has seemed best that 
the lectures as published should, as nearly as 
possible, reproduce the addresses as spoken. 
Whatever defects may be found in this volume, 
no one will be more aware of them than the author ; 
but it is hoped that the contents of this book will 
be judged by their purpose and object, and not 
be subjected to unnecessarily minute criticism. 
Some facts and arguments presented here have 
been used in previous books from the same pen, 
but, if not new in form of statement, are at least 

in a new setting, and have a new bearing on other 

vi 



A Preliminary Word 

truths and arguments. The same facts and illus- 
trations are susceptible of manifold uses. 

The sole aim of this book is to awaken faith where 
it does not exist, and to strengthen and confirm 
it where it does; it is hoped, therefore, both to 
reach the honest doubter and to help believers, 
becoming the means of producing, or at least pro- 
moting, an intelligent and rational conviction that, 
in the Holy Scriptures we have God's Living 
Oracles, inspired by His Holy Spirit. It is de- 
voutly hoped that, as in the Bible, Christ is the 
center and focus, He may be found in this book to 
hold the very shrine. 

Arthur T. Pierson. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., ii2y Dean St., January, igo^. 



vu 



Table of Contents 

CHAPTER I PAOB 

Introductory 1 

CHAPTER II 
The Bible as a Book 11 

CHAPTER III 
The Bible and Science 34 

CHAPTER IV 
The Bible and Prediction . 66 

CHAPTER V 
The Bible and Prediction — Continued .... 87 

CHAPTER VI 
The Bible and Christ 103 

CHAPTER VII 
The Bible and Indirect Forecast 123 

CHAPTER VIII 
The Bible and Forecasts of Atonement . . . 144 

ix 



Table of Contents 

CHAPTER IX pAGB 

The Bible and the Blood: the Philosophy of the 

Atonement 165 

CHAPTER X 
The Bible and the God-Man 183 

CHAPTER XI 
The Bible and God's Thoughts 209 

CHAPTER XII 
The Bible and God's Ethics 227 



God's Living Oracles 

CHAPTER I 

Intro ducto ry 

What the heart of a fortress is to its outworks 
and minor defences, that, to the Christian Faith, 
is the Inspired Word of God — its central strong- 
hold. To give up that , in any measure , is , therefore , 
in so far, to yield up the whole fortress to the foe. 

Infidelity and irreligion seem now to be massing 
all their united forces for a combined and final 
assault upon the whole system of Christianity, and 
there are signs of a subtle, ingenious and Satanic 
plot to undermine its very foundations by destroy- 
ing all belief in the supernatural. All intelligent 
faith in the supernatural rests, ultimately, upon 
the divine origin, plenary inspiration and infallible 
authority of the Bible, as the Book of God; and 
hence, naturally and necessarily, this book becomes 
the very center both of the attack and the defence. 

Such facts at such a crisis constitute a challenge 
to the believer to examine anew into the whole 



God's Living Oracles 

question whether there be ample evidence of the 
super-human authorship of this book, carefully to 
weigh its claims to divine authority, and to deter- 
mine how far it utters a judgment and verdict from 
which there is no appeal. In such matters, doubt 
is disaster, for even an honest misgiving is destruc- 
tive both of intellectual conviction and moral 
repose, unsettling, if not undermining, the very 
basis upon which rests human confidence in the 
stability of a structure, the like of which never was 
reared. On the other hand, whatever confirms 
and establishes faith in the Living Oracles of God 
correspondingly affects every interest dearest to 
the believer and to mankind. If intelligent investi- 
gation produces certainty of conviction, the results 
are manifold: the whole history of Christianity 
for nearly two thousand years is vindicated; fresh 
force is imparted to all holy living and new nerve 
is infused into mxodern missions at home and abroad, 
while such faith in the Bible inspires a grand hope 
for all coming ages. The remote results are cor- 
respondingly grand; for, in proportion as, in this 
generation, confidence in the Word of God is con- 
firmed, generations, yet unborn, will feel more 
assured that they have a rock basis for their creed 
and conduct. 

The subject calls for calm, candid, patient inves- 



Introductory 

tigation. Rhetorical emphasis cannot be made to 
do duty for rational conviction, invective cannot 
supply the lack of intelligence, nor can abuse of 
those who are believed to be in error, take the place 
of the sound argument that compels conviction and 
grounds believers in the truth. In a game, he who 
only stands on the defensive, loses; in battle, 
victory seldom comes to an army that only hides 
behind entrenchments ; and what is needed for the 
vindication of Christianity is that we shall not 
simply be able to hold our own, but to carry the 
war into the enemy's territory. Men demand not 
negations but positions — positive proofs that the 
Bible is of God, proofs that will bear the searchlight 
and stand severe tests. It will not do for faith to 
be indistinguishable from credulity. God never 
meant that the believer's confidence in His word 
should be a blind bigoted assumption of what is 
unproven, hiding behind ignorance, tradition or 
superstition. If the Bible be a divine book, it has 
nothing to fear from rational inquiry. Investi- 
gation will issue in vindication, and the more 
searching the investigation, the more triumphant 
the vindication. 

A few years ago a party of five, roped together, 
were climbing a precipitous cliff in the Alps. At a 
critical point in the ascent, the lowermost man lost 

3 



God's Living Oracles 

foothold, and dragged after him the next above, 
and so on, till the increased strain caused all the 
party to lose their foothold except the leader, who, 
driving his axe and alpenstock into the ice, and 
bracing himself firmly, enabled the man, next 
below, to regain his footing, and so successively 
each of the four once more recovered himself, 
because the foremost man had stood the strain. 
It is not too much to say that, while the Word of 
God holds its place firmly in the minds and hearts 
of men, as God's own book, inbreathed of the Holy 
Spirit and to be believed and trusted in every part 
as a divine guide to doctrine and duty, all that is 
most precious in our Christian faith and life holds 
its place in our convictions and confidence; but 
that, if the Bible loses or loosens its hold upon us 
as an infallible standard of truth and duty, every- 
thing else goes down with it into the same abyss of 
doubt. For, let it be remembered, the Word of 
God is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, of the Holy 
Ghost, of the nature and secrets of all spiritual life; 
without it we have no authentic history of Jesus 
the Saviour, no knowledge of the way of salvation, 
no unfolding of the mystery of Godliness, no clear 
unveiling of a future life. 

It is common, in these days, carelessly to say 
that, even if the Bible were taken from the believer, 

4 



Introductory ^ 

he cannot be separated from Christ who, by the 
Spirit of God, dwells within him; and hence it is 
argued that, while it is of supreme consequence to 
possess Christ, it is not needful to be concerned as 
to whether or not the Word of God be infallibly 
inspired. This fallacy is too shallow to deceive or 
mislead a thoughtful disciple; for it by no means 
follows that, after one has safely reached a secure 
resting-place, it is of no consequence what becomes 
of the road thither by which he traveled. Is one 
to feel no concern for those who are to come after 
and who will be dependent on finding a plain path 
to the same goal.? Only a madman or a monster 
would be indifferent to the obliteration of all the 
marks, blazed on the trees of a dense forest or 
dangerous jungle, for the guidance of lost travelers, 
because he himself had got into the open fields 
beyond. Were every Bible burned, and the 
teaching of that Book blotted out from the litera- 
ture of mankind, how is another soul of man to 
know with any certainty, of Christ, of salvation by 
grace, of the Holy Spirit, and of the new birth in 
Him, of the plan of God for worldwide missions, of 
Christian stewardship, of the second advent of our 
Lord, and of the future state with its final awards? 
For such reasons, among many others, it is first 
of all needful for all believers to have an intelligent, 

5 



God's Living Oracles 

rational, unshakable confidence in God's Word as 
divine in origin, inspired of the Holy Spirit, a safe 
guide in belief and a sure pattern for practice. 

We say an intelligent and reasonable faith. 
"What do you believe?" asked Whitefield of a 
Roman Catholic worker in the coal pits of Corn- 
wall. "What the Church believes," was the 
answer. "And what does the Church believe?" 
"What I believe." "And what do you both 
believe?" ''The same thing.'' 

Fides carbonaria — the "colHer's faith" — has long 
been ridiculed as a specimen of blind credulity. 
To believe only what, and only because, others 
believe, may be perpetuating false teaching, 
helping on what Cyprian called vetustam erroris — 
the old age of error. 

The Spirit of God enjoins disciples to "be ready 
always to give an answer to every one that asketh a 
reason for the hope" that is within them, (i Peter: 
111:15.) The more intelligent and reasonable faith 
is, therefore, the more pleasing and honouring to 
God, the more helpful to men, and the more restful 
and forceful to oneself. 

The interests of truth demand that we should 
take even a stronger and more advanced position. 
The presumption is against the Bible's claims, 
rather than in their favour. Every prominent false 



Introductory 

religion affirms the possession of sacred books, and 
virtually claims a divine origin; the Word of God, 
therefore, must vindicate its right to be accepted, 
while others are rejected, and prove its worthi- 
ness to hold the supreme place in man's confidence 
as the one unique, incomparable Book of God. It 
is true that for thousands of years this Book has, 
by common consent of disciples, been held to be 
divine; yet even this fact cannot, of itself, establish 
its right to intelligent acceptance. Every man 
and woman should so examine for themselves as to 
know why they receive this one book as entitled to 
the preeminence in both intellect and heart, sway- 
ing thoughts, affections and will. 

God has constituted and capacitated human 
beings to weigh evidence, because He means that 
they shall use their faculties in ascertaining what is 
true and false, and what is right and wrong. Man 
is to weigh, in the scales of the reason, whatever 
claims allegiance as truth, and subject it to the 
test of searching scrutiny, that he may separate 
between truth and falsehood. Then he is to weigh, 
in the scales of conscience, whatever claims 
obedience as duty, and try it by the standard of 
moral excellence, that he may discriminate between 
right and wrong. What reason approves as true, 
and conscience sanctions as right, the will is pre- 

7 



God's Living Oracles 

pared to embrace; for the judgment gives its 
decision, that such matters are to be held as con- 
victions and followed as practices. Not only does 
the Bible never avoid or evade such tests, but it 
challenges men to apply them; courting the 
severest search, and claiming obedience only when 
investigation has first established its right to confi- 
dence as the authoritative Word of God. 

The phrase, "Oracles of God," occurs four times 
in the New Testament, and the instances are sig- 
nificant.* Here four things are to be noted: first, 
they are called "living"; second, they are received 
from God, and committed in custody to men to be 
given to others, the fact of such entrustment con- 
stituting the supreme "advantage" or privilege of 
the Jew; third, these oracles contain and inculcate 
certain "first principles"; and fourth, it is to be the 
supreme aim of every preacher and teacher to be 
guided by them in his utterance. These four pas- 
sages thus furnish an illustration of the way in 
which the Word of God supplies the reader with a 
guide to its own interpretation. Here is a body of 
divine communications or revelations. They are 
endowed with living and life-giving power, they 
announce great first principles for our belief and 

♦Acts VII : 38. The Living Oracles. Romans iii: 2: Heb. v:12; 
1 Peter IV: 11. 



Introductory 

practise, and they should control all our speech 
and conduct in behalf of God. 

The lines to be pursued in the following pages 
are thus laid down at the beginning. Taking for 
granted that, if the Bible be the Book of God» 
it contains within itself ample proofs of its divine 
origin, and satisfactory evidence to support its 
claims, let it be the joint endeavour of the Vvrriter and 
the reader to approach the subject with a candid 
mind and a pure conscience. Both intellectual and 
moral honesty are first requisites in such a study. 
The vision of man is binocular. He needs the 
clear seeing eye of the understanding and the 
equally unobscured insight of the heart, to read 
aright the Book of God. The intellectual and 
moral faculties should be focused upon the Divine 
Word, if its character and claims are to be intelli- 
gently and candidly examined and weighed. With 
such conditions attending the investigation, two 
marked results are sure to follow: first, the Bible 
will not be invested with a false halo, which, as the 
incense of superstitious worshippers obscures their 
idol, hinders clearness of vision; and, secondly, 
whatever be its real character and essential glory, 
it will be seen and acknowledged. The same law 
that forbids a blind credulity, prohibits an equally 
blind prejudice. An honest examination makes 

9 



God's Living Oracles 

it alike impossible to believe without proofs and to 
"withhold faith when the evidence is adequate. 
While truth has nothing to fear from the most 
searching tests, no tests can satisfy him in whom 
truth is not enthroned. God therefore "desires 
truth in the inward parts." Light appears and 
appeals only to the seeing and open eye. 



lO 



CHAPTER II 
The Bible as a Book 

The literary element in the Oracles of God 
naturally first claims attention. We have to do 
with a book. 

In nature there are conspicuous phenomena 
which demand explanation. The boulder is such 
a phenomenon. Whether or not man's science 
can satisfactorily account for it, the boulder is an 
indisputable fact and as such must be dealt with.* 
The science would be blind, and the philosophy 
folly, that would deny or dispute its existence. 

Inthe world of letters, there are also phenomena 
which call for investigation and explanation, and 
foremost among them all is this grand Book. 
Hitherto human science and philosophy have 
failed to account for it on any purely natural basis. 
Nevertheless the Bible is a fact, no less to be 
denied than the boulder. Within its pages may 
be found its own explanation. It claims to be a 
supernatural revelation. If this theory be accepted 
it adequately accounts for the book, and the 

♦Prof. Barbour of Glasgow. 
II 



God's Living Oracles 

important question is, is the Bible's explanation 
of itself to be accepted as true ? 

It is necessary to look carefully at this literary 
phenomenon, viewing it from every side, in order 
to appreciate both its real greatness and the need 
of some extraordinary method of accounting for 
its existence, character, survival through the ages, 
and influence among men. 

By universal concession and confession, this is 
the one Book of the ages, altogether unique and 
wholly unrivalled. Hence, its name "The Bible," 
attributed to "John of the golden mouth." At a 
time when all literature was but in its beginning, 
appeared a book that rather befits the ending. 
When the foundation for the pyramid of letters 
was being laid, there was brought forth one stone 
of matchless symmetry, itself a little pyramid, the 
only fit apex to complete and crown the whole 
structure, a capstone whose lines and angles might 
well determine the dimensions and proportions, 
lines and angles of the pyramid. Whence came 
this capstone, while as yet the cornerstone of 
literature was scarce laid? In what quarry was it 
found and by what hand was it hewn? It is, 
moreover, of no common material, but a precious 
stone, a colossal gem, the like of which is found in 
none of the richest quarries or mines of the earth. 

12 



The Bible as a Book 

Thus to describe the Bible is not merely to 
indulge in the poetry of rhetoric, but to state the 
most prosaic fact. This is the one book, which 
neither belongs to nor befits the infancy of the 
race, and yet it was found among men in the early 
days of the world's history ; and, with all the boasted 
learning and wisdom of the twentieth century, it 
still defies all competition. The philosopher and 
sage cannot equal it, neither shall it be exchanged 
for all the jewels and fine gold of the noblest poetry 
and richest products of the imagination. 

Human hands had indeed to do with it. Scores 
of different writers contributed to its pages; but 
this, instead of accounting for it, rather deepens 
our perplexity as to its origin, unless there was 
manifestly, behind and above these human com- 
posers and compilers, some one true author who 
at least superintended and controlled the whole. 
Great Cathedrals, like those of Milan and Cologne, 
occupied centuries in building. Hundreds and 
thousands of workmen wrought upon them. 
Generations gave their successive relays of labourers 
who hoisted the marble blocks to their places and 
built up walls and buttresses, pillars and arches, 
spires and pinnacles. Surely no one needs to be 
told that, behind and beyond these builders, there 
must have been some one architect who built the 

13 



God's Living Oracles 

fane in his own mind before the cornerstone was 
laid; who, first of all, drew the plans and furnished 
even the minute specifications; so that such a 
structure owes its matchless symmetry, not to the 
men of brawn that worked on it, but to that one 
man of brain that thought out the cathedral in its 
completeness, and whose detailed plans directed 
the day-labourers in their work. 

The Bible is a stately cathedral. Many human 
builders have in turn wrought on the structure. 
Who is the architect? What one mind is that 
which planned and saw the whole building, before 
Moses wrote those first words of Genesis, which 
by no accident, as though to carve the architect's 
name on the vestibule, are these: "In the 
Beginning God." 

Does the Bible, considered as a book, demand a 
divine author? To answer this, it behooves us, 
first, to look carefully at some of its leading charac- 
teristics, as a book, to examine it as a literary 
product and an achievement in the world of letters. 

This question — ^whether the literary character of 
the Book comports with its claim to a divine 
authorship, is the natural vestibule by which the 
student approaches the inner teachings and con- 
tents of the Oracles of God. 

One should make sure, as he treads this threshold 

14 



The Bible as a Book 

that he brings to his investigation that first of all 
requisites, already referred to — a candid mind. 
Candor is a rare quality. We repeat by way of 
emphasis that many a truth is seen falsely, or not 
at all, because of defects in the mental or moral 
vision. Few have an unbiased mind, so open to 
conviction as to be prepared to weigh proofs with 
absolute impartiality, and to admit the full force 
of evidence, even when it upsets former convictions 
and disproves former conclusions. Bigotry hates 
light. Prejudice only contracts the mental eye as 
light is poured upon it, and may even close it so as 
to shut out the rays entirely. In order to form safe 
and sound opinions, it is necessary to lay aside 
prejudices and prepossessions, alike, so as to look 
at plain facts, and give them their full value. It is 
well also to bear in mind Paley's maxim, never to 
let what we do not know disturb our confidence as 
to what we do know; and Butler's still wiser 
proverb, that, if a fact is once settled, objections 
cannot unsettle it ; for the fact rests on our knowl- 
edge, but the objections on our ignorance. 

Here then is a remarkable literary phenomenon 
to be accounted for ; if in any natural human way, 
by all means that should suffice: the "Law of Par- 
simony," or "Economy of Force," forbids needless 
admission of a miracle. But, if this greatest of 

15 



God's Living Oracles 

books cannot be accounted for satisfactorily upon 
a purely natural and human basis, we are driven to 
accept its own self-explanation and concede the 
mysterious supernatural and superhuman element 
which it claims. 

The Bible is assumed to be a phenomenon, 
wholly unrivalled in the world of letters, since, 
even its enemies being judges, this is not denied. 

One of its most important features is its unity, 
and as marvellous as it is conspicuous. Every 
circumstance connected with its preparation and 
production, was calculated to prevent and prohibit 
such unity. Here are sixty-six different books, 
written by some forty different authors, in three 
different languages, and the periods of authorship 
cover a score or more of centuries. These human 
writers were brought up in different countries, and 
were so remote from each other in time and space, 
that they could have had no mutual acquaintance, 
and could neither have conspired for an evil end 
nor combined for the best purpose. The subjects 
on which they wrote were very diverse and various, 
some historical, some prophetical, some devotional, 
some ethical . The form of their writings was in some 
cases prose and in others poetry, and yet, notwith- 
standing all these divergent elements, they have 

produced essentially one book. Not only is the 

i6 



The Bible as a Book 

Bible as a whole an unrivalled phenomenon, but 
its features are all phenomenal, and none more so 
than this convergence of contents like rays toward 
one common focal point. 

As the reader takes up this Book, he finds, first 
of all, that it is in two parts, known as the Old and 
New Testaments. But each of these is multiplex 
and complex : in the Old Testament are thirty-nine 
parts, and in the New, twenty-seven. Yet, when 
these two Testaments are examined more closely, 
in each is found a historic, ethic and prophetic 
element. The historic gives the annals, or outline 
of events; the ethic adds the moral and spiritual 
teaching necessary for guidance in practical life, 
and the prophetic forecasts the future. Taking 
the three together, the reader finds, spread before 
him, past history, present duty, and future destiny. 

This unity reaches not only to all great matters, 
but even to most minute details. The grand- 
moral and spiritual lessons, by whomsoever taught, 
or in whatsoever v/ay, essentially agree. Certain 
conspicuous conceptions or ideas pervade the 
whole book, like golden cords on which all else is 
strung — such as the ideas of the Kingdom of God, 
sin and salvation, sacrifice and priesthood. Many 
of these conceptions are so lofty and unique in 
sublimity and novelty, that it is impossible to 

17 



God's Living Oracles 

account for them on any human theory. They 
are not the product of the times in which these 
men wrote, nor are the like found in any other 
literature of those or subsequent periods; more- 
over, for some of them no adequate words could 
be found then in use among men, so that old words 
and phrases had to be invested with a new mean- 
ing; as for instance, holiness, humility, love. In 
not a few cases, the conceptions were even para- 
doxical: they seemed to involve contradiction if 
not absurdity; yet they were too grand and awe- 
inspiring to be set aside as mere vagaries of ignor- 
ance and foolishness, as for instance, the idea of 
eternity — endless duration without succession — 
or of absolute sovereignty which decrees all events, 
yet both allows and ordains freedom of choice and 
action; or the idea of a trinity in the Godhead 
without plurality of Gods, and many other like 
conceptions which seem above the mind of man 
to originate, or even to comprehend when sug- 
gested. 

The unity of the Bible is absolutely unique. 
Never elsewhere have so many different treatises, 
historical, biographical, ethical, prophetical, poeti- 
cal, been combined together, making one book, as 
all the hewn stone and timber make one building, 

or better still, as all the bones, muscles and liga- 

i8 



The Bible as a Book 

ments combine in one body. This again, while 
indisputable as a fact, is unparalled in literature, 
all the conditions being, humanly speaking, not 
only unfavourable, but fatal to such combination. 
Wherever else we find diversity of writers, we 
expect diversity of matter, each writer having his 
own character, or individuality, reaching into all 
departments of his being and work. As no two 
faces or forms are precisely alike, the individual 
features of mind and heart are yet more marked. 
Charles the Fifth found that he could not even 
make two watches run exactly together, much 
less make two men think or feel alike. Tempera- 
ments differ. Dispositions, like lenses, magnify 
or minify or color whatever is seen through them. 
These natural peculiarities, inborn, are also inbred. 
Education, instead of removing, develops and 
intensifies them, making absolute uniformity and 
agreement the more impossible. The whole ten- 
dency of growth is from unity toward diversity. 
Society is a plant that, the more it grows, the more 
it branches and minutely ramifies. Men are kept 
alike only by keeping them from growing, and 
even then, the similarity is only seeming. The 
freedom that knocks off fetters and leaves them 
free to think and speak, also leaves them free to 
develop independence and individuality. The 

19 



God's Living Oracles 

writers of the Bible have all the marks of individu- 
ality. How different Moses from Malachi, Isaiah 
from Daniel, James from John, Peter from Paul! 
This diversity of nature cannot but betray itself 
in style, which, as Buffon said, ''is the man;" 
language, Wordsworth called the "incarnation of 
thought," expression of feeling and words taking 
on all the varieties of the inner life. 

Diversity of times, places and circumstances 
would ordinarily make unity impossible. These 
many writers belong to different generations, 
centuries and ages in human history. They lived 
in different lands. Their surroundings were vari- 
ous, they spoke different languages, were moulded 
in the matrix of diverse national life. How differ- 
ent a life of exile in Babylon from one of pilgrim- 
age in the desert, or a home in Judea; how opposite 
the associations of the herdsman of Tekoa and 
the cupbearer in the Persian court! How far off 
in periods were Ezra in Jerusalem and John in 
Patmos; Moses in Egypt and Paul in Rome! 

The diversity in subject matter is more striking. 

In this one book may be found every variety of 

theme that can well be imagined, from the story 

of creation to the forecast of the new creation. 

Here is endless diversity — fragments of national 

history, and of individual biography, poems and 

20 



The Bible as a Book 

speeches, proverbs and predictions, parables and 
ethical teachings, legal enactments and elaborate 
ritual, romances of love and awful tragedies of 
judgment, plain precepts for right living, and 
spectacular dramatic scenes, gorgeously painted 
in oriental imagery; miracles and mysteries, the 
prattle of a child, side by side with the prof oundest 
discourses of philosophers and sages. 

All this diversity of subject implies correspond- 
ing variety in the immediate object or purpose in 
view. These various books were written to serve 
different ends. Sometimes they set forth the will 
of God as to daily life, and sometimes unfold His 
great plans for the race. Here are lyrics, intended 
to express and guide a devotional spirit ; and again, 
stories of suffering to illustrate the victory of faith 
and rewards of patience. The evangelists give a 
fourfold portrait of Christ; and the Epistles apply 
His teachings to the current needs and perils of 
existing churches. The book of Joshua is a book 
of the wars of the Lord; Solomon's Song is a 
dramatic love poem, and its scene, a court. The 
book of Judges treats of a period of semi-anarchy; 
the Acts, of a generation of primitive church life. 
No two of these treatises cover the same ground. 
The diversity, which, in any other book, would be 
fatal to unity — here, somehow, contributes to it, 

21 



God's Living Oracles 

as a great variety of stones, of all forms, shapes and 
colours, combine in an exquisite mosaic. Does 
not such a mosaic argue a master hand that artis- 
tically arranges the stones according to a pre- 
conceived pattern? 

In many other ways or forms this unity appears, 
and all are remarkable. Further examples may 
be found in some facts, generally overlooked, of 
which two may be mentioned. 

I. The first mention of a number, person, place 
or subject usually, if not uniformly, determines 
its general usage afterward, and its relation to the 
entire remainder of the book. When we first 
meet the number "seven," it stands for a com- 
pleted work, and a period of rest. Throughout 
the Bible that number seems to represent essen- 
tially the same conceptions. The first mention of 
the Spirit of God is in connection with brooding, 
like a dove, over the watery abyss to bring life 
and order out of chaos. From that point on, this 
seems to be His special work — a sort of maternal 
office, brooding over the chaos of a ruined race to 
develop celestial order, life and beauty. The first 
time the words, "believe", "counted" and "right- 
eousness" appear, either separately or together, 
is in connection with the statement that Abram 
*' believed in the Lord and it was counted unto him 

22 



The Bible as a Book 

for righteousness."* From that point on, faith 
and the imputation of righteousness are indis- 
solubly Hnked. This law of "first mention" is so 
conspicuous that it suppHes a sort of lexicon of 
biblical terms, giving the reader of Genesis a key- 
to the meaning of the whole Scripture and making 
the Bible its own commentary. Yet it is plain that, 
without supernatural guidance, the writer who 
first used words or phrases in such a collection 
could not have forecast the subsequent use and 
application by other writers of the terms he used. 

2. Again, it is essential in a book which is prac- 
tically the guide for the faith and life of millions of 
men, that every great subject having to do with 
daily duty should have adequate treatment. 
Somewhere, between Genesis and Revelation, 
every such matter is treated, comprehensively and 
exhaustively, and usually once for all, very few 
instances of repetition occurring. 

For instance, there is but one comprehensive 
portrait of charity (i Cor. xiii). The power of the 
tongue is once exhaustively treated (James, iii). 
Once for all the dual nature of the God-man is 
fully set before us (Hebrews: i, ii). The laws and 
principles of Christian giving are found in 2 Cor. 
VIII, IX. God's search for lost souls is set forth 

*Gen. XV : 6. 
23 



God's Living Oracles 

especially in Luke xv by a three-fold parable, and 
the mysteries of the kingdom in Matthew xiii in 
a series of seven parables. The last judgment 
of the great white throne is found only in Rev. xx. 
Faith, its nature and victories, only with any ful- 
ness in Hebrews xi, xii. There is no complete 
discourse on the resurrection except in i Cor. xv. 
The last discourse and intercessory prayer of our 
Lord, only in John xiv-xvii. Romans vi-viii is 
one complete discussion of the question, ''Shall we 
continue in sin?" There is no such chapter else- 
where as the twenty-first of Numbers, the twelfth 
of Exodus, or the thirty-eighth of Job, or the fifty- 
third of Isaiah. The present rest of faith is 
treated only in Heb. in : 7 to iv : 1 1 . And the final 
community of the redeemed finds adequate 
treatment only in Rev. xxi-xxii. 

All this implies divine foresight. Humanly 
speaking, no writer could have foreseen what 
topics would be covered in the writings of other 
contributors to the body of Scripture. Yet we 
find, scattered throughout this sacred Book, 
monographs, each singularly complete in itself, and 
each making any other on the same subject unnec- 
essary. While apparently there is no arrangement, 
yet there is obviously a consummate plan, by 

which all needs are met, yet none oversupplied. 

24 



The Bible as a Book 

It would be impossible to find any great matter on 
which information and instruction are needed 
which is not somewhere treated satisfactorily ; and, 
whatever fragmentary teachings may be found 
scattered through the Word, there is some one 
place where these isolated precepts are gathered 
together and combined, and the full truth on any 
great subject is taught. 

The unity of the Bible constitutes, in and of 
itself, a conclusive proof of its supernatural and 
superhuman origin. It is difficult even to suppose 
a case of a similar character. Any such a volume, 
if compiled at all, would not be homogeneous but 
heterogeneous, the only unity being that mechanical 
unity dependent on the binder who puts together 
in one cover literary productions having no common 
point of view, plan of treatment, or unity of theme. 
In this one Book the impossible is actual and real, 
and the unity is the more remarkable because it is 
manifold. 

This unity is structural; the Bible is built 
up on a definite plan. In the New Testament 
the four Gospel narratives are not mere repetitions, 
but designed to present as many aspects of the life 
and career of the Lord Jesus Christ ; then the book 
of the Acts immediately follows, showing what He 
continued to do and to teach by the Holy Spirit in 

25 



God's Living Oracles 

the Church, and how the Pentecostal Baptism pre- 
pared the Church for her witnessing career in 
Judea, Samaria, and then among Romans and 
Greeks. 

The Gospel narratives appear to stand substan- 
tially in the order of composition; but manifestly 
here is a divine design. The gospel according to 
Matthew, written for the Hebrew mind, must come 
first, for it links on the Old Testament to the New, 
and for two reasons: first, because the Hebrew race 
forms the grand center of Old Testament history; 
and, second, because the Messiah was of the Jews 
and the consummate flower of the Jewish genea- 
logical tree. Mark, the companion of Peter, 
obviously addresses the Latin mind, the Gentiles, 
particularly Romans, as was fitting, for, in the 
book of the Acts, Peter was appointed first to open 
the door of faith to the Romans. Then follows 
Luke, who, as Paul's companion, would naturally 
write also for Gentiles, but especially for Greeks, 
among whom Paul's ministry was so largely spent. 
John's narrative supplements all the others, and 
has the most catholic aim and character, and 
appeals to the human race as such and to believers 
generally without regard to nationality. 

There are five Epistle writers, Paul especially the 

Apostle of Faith, Peter, of Hope, John, of Love, 

26 



The Bible as a Book 

James, of Good Works, and Jude, of Warning 

against Apostasy. Thus, without human design, 

or intentional cooperation, all the necessary ground 

is covered without overlapping. 

The unity is diadactic and ethical. There is no 

inconsistency in the moral teaching from beginning 

to end; or, if at first any is apparent, a further 

and more careful examination reveals harmony, as 

the two pictures in the stereoscope blend together 

when once the proper focus is found by the eye. 

The whole Bible consistently teaches, on the basis 

of natural religion, with creation as its cornerstone, 

an original and universal fatherhood of God and 

brotherhood of Man ; but that only on the basis of 

spiritual redemption, with the new creation as 

its cornerstone, is found again the true fatherhood 

or brotherhood which sin lost or forfeited. Around 

these dual conceptions of man's natural and spirtual 

relations to God and his fellowman, all ethical 

teaching of the Bible moves. Part of man's 

relation and duty to his fellowman originates in the 

fact that all are "offspring" of God, by nature; but 

the higher level, both of obligation and privilege, 

is reached only when, born from above, men become 

partakers of the divine nature, and children of 

God by faith in Christ Jesus. Then is recognized 

a new relation to the household of faith and a new 

27 



God's Living Oracles 

motive and reason is felt for doing good unto all 
men. 

This unity is historic. The Bible, however, is not 
a history of the race, but rather of the kingdom of 
God. It centers about a chosen family, the family 
of Abraham, and so a chosen nation — Israel. It 
follows this people till they become apostate. 
After this, the historic thread is dropped, and not 
resumed until it is caught up prophetically in the 
predicted restoration of Israel. The long interval 
covering the "Times of the Gentiles" has no proper 
record in this book, and other nations incidentally 
appear in the narrative only or mainly as related to 
this chosen nation, Israel, and the kingdom of God 
under Messiah. 

This unity is prophetic. Here again Israel and 
the kingdom of God form the central idea. Adam, 
the original creation king, lost his sceptre in the 
fall and Satan obtained it by right of conquest. 
The Second Man, espousing Adam's cause, over- 
came his victor, and so regained the lost sceptre; 
and in Him — ^the last Adam — ^the restored king- 
dom will stand forever and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it. All prophecy ultimately 
relates to this new King, the Divine Head of the 
Adamic race, and to His kingdom; to His first 

coming and its militant period, to His second 

28 



The Bible as a Book 

coming and its triumphant period. Other parties 
are referred to as the foes of God and His people, 
such as Nineveh, Egypt, Babylon, Tyre, etc., in 
former days — the beast, false prophet, Babylon 
and the dragon, in the latter days. 

The unity is mathematic. A numerical system 
obviously pervades the Bible; and, although its full 
meaning or final object is not yet disclosed to us or 
discerned by us, certain conclusions seem safe. 
For example, the mathematical forms which 
pervade the Word of God, appear to be the triangle, 
square and circle, with the corresponding pyramid, 
cube and sphere. According to the conclusions of 
those who have most carefully studied the numerical 
system of Scripture, the numbers which seem to 
have special significance are, one, as the symbol of 
unity; two, of contrast or confirmation; three, of the 
Trinity ; four, of the world and space ; seven, which 
as the sum of three and four, is the natural expres- 
sion of completeness and rest; ten, the sum of the 
first four numbers, expressive of completeness by 
successive additions — and hence one of the numbers 
of time; twelve, the multiple of three and four, ex- 
pressing the penetration or pervasion of the human 
by the divine, etc. This may hint the reason why 
forty so often appears — the multiple of four and 

ten — ^the numbers of time and space ; and seventy, a 

29 



God's Living Oracles | 

complete time period ; and 144,000 — the cube of ten 
multiplied into the square of twelve. Reverent 
and humble students of the Bible hesitate to claim 
peculiar insight into the mystery of Bible numbers ; 
but the uniformity of their use, by various writers, 
compels the belief that the great Mathematician 
of the Universe was behind such use. Here alone 
there opens an almost untrodden field for bound- 
less investigation and possible discovery. 

This unity, which we have found to be structural, 
seems also to be organic, the unity of a living 
organism, in which there is a pervasive, vitalizing 
spirit, making all parts living members and organs, 
all necessary to the whole body and to each other. 
Of the biblical body of truth, as of the mystical 
Body of Christ, it is therefore true that no part can: 
say to another, **I have no need of thee," and that 
those members which seem to be feeble, or less, 
honorable, are equally necessary to the complete: 
body, and have a God-given honor in supplying 
what otherwise would be a lack. 

In the human body, careful investigation shows 
that right and left eyes, ears, hands and feet hold a 
mutually complementary relation, and are meant 
to work together; so the various books of the Bible 
sustain a mutual relation. Let anyone compare 
the opening verses of Genesis, of the Gospel accord- 

30 



The Bible as a Book 

ing to John, and of the first Epistle of John; let 
him read, side by side, Leviticus and Hebrews; 
Joshua and the Acts of the Apostles; the Epistles 
of Paul and of James; Ezekiel, Daniel and the 
Apocalypse ; Judges and Jude ; Ruth and Solomon's 
Song, Exodus and the two letters to the Corin- 
thians. Let the careful student diligently compare 
the four Gospel narratives, and examine their 
points of likeness and unlikeness; and the more 
diligent his study is, the more will he see that one 
consummately comprehensive plan pervades this 
organism in which every member has its ministry, 
and that not one book could be spared without 
maiming the Body of the Word. 

In an organic body, all parts are necessary to its 
completeness, though not equally important in their 
prominence and service. When one part, how- 
ever small, is gone, there is what is called mayhem, 
a defective body, and no artificial substitute can 
make the body complete. Certain parts of the 
body are called vital parts by way of distinction; 
other parts may be lost and the body live; but if 
these are gone, death ensues. 

Most important of all, the unity is personal and 
Messianic. One grand Personage is the Living 
Sun aibout which all planets and their satellites 
revolve. For Hini, the Living Word, the Written 

31 



God's Living Oracles 

Word was framed. Like the strange star which 
Eastern magi saw, the Bible has a special mission 
as to Christ: it burns with His borrowed Light, it 
guides all seekers to Him, it rests over Him, it loses 
in His glory its own lustre, and in Him finds alike 
its explanation and its end. 

Some of the statements hitherto made in brief 
are subsequently to be expanded and illustrated. 
It seemed well, however, to group together in this 
manner the various leading features of the Bible as 
a book among books; but, thus early in the investi- 
gation, candor constrains the confession that, how- 
ever the Bible may be accounted for, it stands not 
only without superior, but without equal or rival, 
as a literary product beyond comparison, towering 
in solitary grandeur above all other writings of men. 

This is the first stage reached in our study. 
Both in the order of time and merit, this book 
stands confessedly first, not only prominent, but 
preeminent. The book of Job is the earliest and 
the finest of dramatic poems. No devout lyrics 
can match the Psalms of David, no proverbs 
equal those of Solomon, no prophetic visions those 
of Isaiah and Ezekiel, no ethical precepts those of 
Christ. What biography was ever so short and 
sublime as that of Enoch : "He walked with God and 
he was ijiot, for God took him?" Where is such a 

32 



The Bible as a Book 

portrait of love as in i Corinthians xiii, or such 
exhibition of gratitude for forgiveness as in 
Luke VII, or such humihty as in John xiii? Can 
all literature furnish two parables equal to those 
in Luke xv and John xv ? 

What wonder is it if the believer feels that, even 
considered as a literary product, this Book is 
superhuman ? 



33 



CHAPTER III 

The Bible and Science 

The Oracles of God must have some relation, 
however indirect, to truth at large. The God of 
all truth cannot, in any of His utterances, contra- 
dict Himself. His kingdom cannot stand and be 
divided against itself. Manifestly His works 
and His word must, in all essentials, agree. Hence 
the question as to the attitude of the Bible toward 
science cannot be avoided. 

There is a scientific element in the Word of God, 
though it is not in any proper sense a scientific 
treatise, and for obvious reasons should not be; 
since there is no need of any supernatural revela- 
tion of scientific facts, which may be ascertained 
in natural ways. God would neither waste miracu- 
lous energy on His own part, nor encourage on 
man's part, intellectual indolence and inertia. 
Moreover, the reception of scientific truth by man 
is partly dependent on its discovery by man; the 
research which ultimately unvails the mysteries 
of nature, meanwhile develops in the investigators 
the capacity for the apprehension and apprecia- 

34 



The Bible and Science 

tion of such truth when disclosed. Ignorance is 
naturally blind, only intelligence being open- 
eyed; and it is this painstaking study of the facts 
and phenomena of nature which transforms 
ignorance into intelligence, and so endows man 
with scientific vision. 

If God, in the Bible, plainly pre-announced 
scientific facts, He would therefore, be unwise 
and self-contradictory ; and such pre-announce- 
ment would be harmful rather than useful, per- 
plexing the reader, raising controversy, dividing 
human opinion and discrediting divine revelation. 

While all this may be fairly conceded, on the 
other hand, the God of the Bible, being also the 
God of nature, it is equally plain that, on whatever 
theme the Omniscient One speaks, even incident- 
ally and casually, He must be at home. When a 
thoroughly educated man writes a history, his 
culture appears even in incidental references to 
other departments of knowledge, such as geography 
and astronomy, and his education will be seen 
even in his grammar and spelling. The All- 
knowing God cannot be supposed to betray ignor- 
ance on any subject, nor the God of all truth to 
lend Himself to falsehood. The Bible claims 
divine authorship. Infinite veracity cannot lend 
sanction to what is essentially erroneous, nor can 

35 



God's Living Oracles 

omniscience conceal itself behind the veil of 
popular illusion and delusion, prevailing super- 
stition, or careless inaccuracy. 

Certain propositions seem both to be self- 
evident, and to deserve to be put boldly at the 
front in all discussion of the attitude of the Bible 
toward science: 

1. The Bible is not, and could not, in the nature 
of things, be, primarily, a scientific book. 

2. Were it such it would impugn the wisdom of 
its divine author, and discredit its divine origin. 

3. Incidentally, and unavoidably, however, it 
must touch upon the realm of science. 

4. God, the only Infallible Scientist, cannot be 
supposed to make mis-statements, or exhibit 
ignorance. 

While these are self-evident propositions, it 
follows that, as some reference to scientific facts 
is inevitable, there must be a skillful management 
of such references, so that, without losing sight of 
its primary purpose as a moral and spiritual guide, 
the Bible shall not, at any point, be in conflict with 
essential truth. 

The following additional statements, which we 
are prepared to defend, also indicate the general 
line of the discussion which follows: 

I. Without anticipating, directly, scientific dis- 

36 



The Bible and Science 

covery, Biblical language, properly interpreted, 
does not contradict established facts. 

2. A poetic phraseology is often used, which by 
the flexibility of figurative or imaginative terms, 
allows room for expansion and accommodation to 
facts when known. 

3. Tested by cosmogony, astronomy, geology 
and zoology, physiology and comparative anatomy, 
natural philosophy and sanitary science, etc., this 
Book evinces superhuman knowledge and wisdom. 

4. Hence the Bible is a scientific marvel. It 
belongs to the oldest class of literature, yet it is 
the youngest and newest in adaptation to scientific 
discovery, and perpetually keeps abreast of human 
progress. 

Close examination reveals what might be 
expected, if this is God's book — divine ingenuity 
in solving the problem already indicated. Infinite 
wisdom devised a middle path between pre- 
announcement of scientific facts and laws, and 
endorsement of current errors and absurdities. 
The elastic phraseology employed is susceptible of 
a new and broader interpretation as new facts 
come to light, which demand such accommoda- 
tion. In some instances popular language is used 
which is not technically accurate, and yet such 
language does not indicate ''error," being perfectly 

37 



God's Living Oracles 

admissible, because true to facts of appearance. 
With the foremost modern scientists it is both 
customary and accounted proper to describe such 
natural phenomena without so correcting the terms 
used as to conform strictly and technically to 
scientific standards. The most learned natural 
philosopher does not hesitate to speak of the sun's 
rising and the horizon's sinking, though both are 
due to the earth's axial revolution, and are only 
facts of appearance. Similar latitude may prop- 
erly be claimed for the Word of God, which con- 
forms its language to such facts of appearance, 
where no essential error is involved. 

The final conclusion to which we are compelled 
to come is that the scientific terms used in the Bible 
constitute a part of the Oracles of God, such 
language being itself oracular or essentially 
parabolic, hiding the truth in enigma — mysteriously 
enfolding a germ of scientific fact, which subse- 
quent research is to unfold, expand, and invest 
with a new, true and unsuspected scientific mean- 
ing. These statements a few examples will suffice 
to illustrate, and so to vindicate: 

I. The mother of all the sciences is Cosmogony, 
the science of creation. Man's first question, as 
he opens his eyes intelligently upon the universe of 
matter, is, "How came all this to be? and when? 

38 



The Bible and Science 

and by whom? Out of this as natural offspring 
come all the other questions as to the physical 
constitution of the universe and the mystery of 
planetary and stellar worlds: the constitution of 
man and his complex nature and being; of the 
lower animals, and their various ranks in the scale 
of being; of plants, and the mystery of vegetable 
life; and the constitution of the earth with its 
material forms and forces. The study of cosmogony 
leads also to the more general and comprehensive 
science of natural philosophy, which deals with 
the phenomena of life, light, heat, motion, and all 
forms or manifestations of force in the universe, 
with the grand laws which govern them. 

As to Cosmogony, this mother of all sciences, 
one brief sublime sentence in the opening verse of 
the Bible, grandly declares: 

"In the Beginning God Created the Heavens 
AND the Earth." 

There was, then, a beginning: when, it is not said; 
but back of that beginning was One who had no 
beginning. Creation had a Creator. This one 
short sentence of ten words is yet so pregnant 
with divine meaning that, after thousands of years, 
men are yet finding in it new and grander signifi- 
cances. 

How many errors are here corrected! "In the 

39 



God's Living Oracles 

beginning" — the fact that there was a beginning 
contradicts the eternity of matter. **In the 
beginning, God" — ^that refutes atheism. It was 
one God, not many, — that knocks over polytheism. 
"God created" — that forbids the doctrine of chance. 
God is separate from creation — that precludes 
pantheism. Matter is not God, — ^that denies 
materialism. As we enter the vestibule of this 
book the first five words of the ten meet us with a 
complete denial of the false philosophies of the 
ages. 

How far this story of the genesis of all things is 
abreast of modern science, every new approach 
to absolute and final truth is continually revealing. 
Infidels have sought to make irreconcilable con- 
tradiction where a reverent reader will discover the 
most singular and surprising correspondence. 

A quotation from a very recent volume may 
furnish an example: 

"So far as the material universe is concerned, 
the two primary factors were matter and motion as 
manifestations of persistent force. Besides these 
two modes we think of phenomena also in relation 
to their sequences, and in relation to their co- 
existences. The former of these two modes we 
call "time" and the latter "space." Mr. Herbert 

Spencer devotes a chapter to the consideration of 

40 



The Bible and Science 

what he calls the most general forms into which 
the manifestations of the unknown are re-divisible ; 
and these forms he finds to be these five: space, 
time, matter, motion, force. 

"Now, if the starting point of religion is really 
scientific, it must follow that these five forms 
which are the factors of all phenomena ought to 
make their appearance at an early stage in her 
scheme. We shall not, of course, expect to find 
them expressed in the terminology of science, but 
shall look for their theological equivalents. Is 
this expectation realized? We answer, that in 
the first two verses (of Genesis) we shall find all 
five. They are these: 

"In the beginning" Time 

"God created the heavens" Space 

"And the earth" Matter 

"And the Spirit of Elohim" Force 

"Moved" Motion."* 

2. Geology, the science of the earth's structure 
and constitution, treating of the operation of its 
physical forces, and the past history of its develop- 
ments, is one of the youngest of the sciences. Pytha- 
goras and Strabo, the only men among the ancients 
whose scientific opinions deserve much notice, made 
scarcely a beginning in the direction of geology; 

*"The Conflict of Truth,'" L. Hugh Capron, p. 135. 
41 



God's Living Oracles 

and Pythagoras belonged to the sixth century B.C., 
and Strabo to the first B. C. During the dark 
ages, no progress was made; but in the sixteenth 
century geological questions began to stir Italy, 
especially, the nature of fossils. In the seventeenth 
century Leibnitz and others carried on researches, 
but it was not till a full century later that Smith, 
in 1790, published his "Tabular View of the British 
Strata," the issue of his geological map of England, 
in 1815, forming an epoch in the history of this 
science, since which strides have been rapid. 

A department of knowledge, thus first really 
explored in the eighteenth century, would, there- 
fore, be most unlikely to prove in accord with the 
opening chapter of the earliest book of the Bible, 
if that were a merely human production. The cor- 
respondence, however, is remarkable. 

Geology, so far as it may claim to have settled 
anything, outlines the story of creation somewhat 
thus : 

First, a state of chaos or general confusion, the 
solid, liquid and fluid elements being mixed some- 
what as they are in a great conflagration. 

Secondly, that there was a light, chemical or 
cosmic in character, which pervaded this general 
chaos or confusion. 

Thirdly, that condensation took place between 

42 



The Bible and Science 

the steaming vapors above and below, those below 
forming rain and water, those above forming 
clouds, and occupying what is called the firmament. 
There came to be thus an "expanse" of atmosphere 
between the waters of the clouds and the waters 
of the sea. 

Fourthly, that out of this great abyss of waters, 
the dry land appeared as the waters subsided. 

Fifthly, that upon this continent thus arising 
above the waters, vegetation began to appear, and 
took three forms — plant, herb and tree, or the 
grasses, the plants and the trees. 

Sixthly, animal life, beginning with what are 
known as the "protozoa" or first forms of life, 
which developed out of the ooze of the ocean bed ; 
animal life ascending through its different grades 
until, 

Seventhly, man comes on the scene as the con- 
summate climax and crown of God's creative work. 

Chaos, chemical light, expanse of atmosphere, 
appearance of land, vegetation in three forms, 
animal life, from the protozoa to the higher verte- 
brata, and, finally, man — exactly Moses* order in 
the first chapter of Genesis! First chaos; then 
God says, "Let light be," and light was; then an 
expanse of atmosphere, called in the English Bible, 
the firmament, but in the Hebrew "Rakya** — an 

43 



God's Living Oracles 

expanse — a marvellously accurate word; then the 
continent, the dry land; vegetation in three forms; 
and then life — "the waters brought forth life;" 
then, bye and bye, higher animals, and at the end 
of the mammalia, man himself. 

Nothing was known about geology when Moses 
wrote, nor for thousands of years after. Who was 
it that guided him in this poetic description of 
Creation, to give thus accurately what the most 
modern of sciences affirms was the original order? 
There is nothing else like this in ancient literature. 
Whenever any of the ancient writers touched the 
science of creation absurd blunders were made. 
Even Plato thought the earth to be an intelligent 
being, and earthquakes were supposed to be such 
motions of the earth as a huge animal would make 
if writhing in pain ! 

In styling the description of creation as "poetic," 
it is not meant to give currency to the notion that 
these first chapters of Genesis are simply a poem, 
having no historic fact behind them. When Moses 
as a prophet was shown the vision of creation, he 
must have looked back, as John in the Apocalypse 
looked forward; and as a series of visions of 
creation passed before his mind, he described what 
he saw: an evening darkness, and a morning devel- 
oping into light; another evening developing into 

44 



The Bible and Science 

another morning; and so another, and still another; 
until the six creative days all passed before him in 
this backward prophetic vision; and probably he 
did not understand what he himself wrote, as is 
said of the prophets (i Peter i :io-i2), nor does any 
reader, however reverent and scientific, yet under- 
stand all that was then written; the studies of 
eternity alone will clothe these visions with their 
full celestial meaning. Meanwhile, those who 
search this Book reverently, find here and there 
suggestions from God to make them confident of 
His authorship of these mysterious pages. 

3. The science of Comparative Anatomy is only 
about one hundred years old. Cuvier, about the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, lifted what 
had hitherto been a mass of unconnected details to 
the dignity of a science. He compared the various 
forms of animal life, observing and recording points 
of similarity and dissimilarity; and so arranged 
facts according to a scientific classification. Com- 
parative anatomy shows an order in the animal 
creation, from the lowest forms to the highest, 
rather than reversely, the question of rank among 
vertebrate animals being determined by the pro-, 
portion of brain to the spinal column, In fish it is. 
2 to I ; in reptiles, 2^^ to i ; in birds, 3 to i ; in mam- 
mals, 4 to I ; then in man it takes a leap, and the 

45 



God's Living Oracles 

proportion of brain to the spinal column is 33 to i, 
v/hich raises man far above any other animal. 

Common sense and observation might have 
shown Moses that man is far above mammals as a 
class, and the mammals higher than most fishes 
and birds, but no common sense or ordinary obser- 
vation would have shown that the fish belongs 
below the reptile, or the reptile below the bird. 
Yet, thousands of years before comparative anat- 
omy took rank among the sciences, Moses followed 
the correct order of classification in this story of 
creation. A candid and rational scientist looking 
at that first chapter of Genesis, must ask how any 
unaided human mind could have guided the hand 
that wrote those words. 

4. Anthropology is the science of man's constitu- 
tion. The question arises as we look on mankind, 
"How is man made?" Was there any science in 
the days of Moses to teach him how man was con- 
stituted? Yet, in the second chapter of Genesis, 
with the boldness of certainty, he writes, that "God 
formed man out of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," 
(Hebrew, "the breath of lives"), as though this 
phrase included both the animal life man has in 
common with the animal creation, and the spiritual 

life he received in common with God. 

46 



The Bible and Science 

According to the Word of God, man is a com- 
pound of spirit, soul, and body,* and, as taught in 
the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, when "the dust 
returns to the earth as it was," "the spirit returns 
unto God who gave it," death being the dissolution 
and separation of that which God brought into 
original unity. That leaves little room for the 
theory of the "sleep of souls," for when one dies, 
he does not go into the earth, body and soul, to 
sleep there, but, while the dust returns to the earth, 
the spirit returns to God who gave it, — a plain 
reference to the original record in the second chap- 
ter of Genesis. 

"God formed man out of the dust of the ground." 
The human body suggests little if any similarity in 
composition to the earth. Moses had no knowl- 
edge, as a human writer, that his body was one with 
the ground, but modem chemical analysis detects 
at least fourteen elements in the human body 
identical with the "dust," — such as oxygen, 
hydrogen, nitrogen, silicon, magnesia, sodium, 
phosphorus, carbon. Yet nothing could be more 
unlike matter in its highly organized form in the 
human body, than the "dust" of the ground from 
which that human body is divinely declared to 
have been formed. It was reserved for modem 

*lThes. v;23. 
47 



God's Living Oracles 

analytical chemistry to demonstrate that what 
Moses wrote is exactly true, when he represented 
the Creator as taking the plain earth clay and 
making out of that the human organism, though 
nothing whatsoever in man's appearance suggests 
this as a fact of observation. It has to be known 
scientifically, yet it could not have been known 
scientifically when Moses wrote Genesis. 

In the story of the creation three words are used 
that are similar, yet unlike, the difference being 
more apparent in the Hebrew, though seen also in 
the English— "created," "formed," "made." One 
of these words means "to make, out and out"; 
another, "to form out of preexisting matter," as a 
potter takes clay and forms it into a vessel ; and the 
other means "to give a cosmical form," that is, to 
make with reference to plan, symmetry, order, 
beauty, as God took crude matter and formed it 
into crystals. 

No one of these expressions is used in connec- 
tion with light. How unique are those five words 
in the Hebrew, "Be light, and light was." It is 
not recorded that God said, "Let earth be, and 
earth was," or "Let stars be, and stars were." 
But he said, "Let light be." Light is not a sub- 
stance. There have been two modern theories of 
light, — the corpuscular theory and the undulatory 

48 



The Bible and Science 

theory; but the later discoveries have shown that 
light is a mode of motion, — vibrations so rapid 
through the ether that they pass over 186,000 
miles a second. Why should not Moses have said 
that God "created" light, as he does say that He 
created the light bearers. He called forth the 
light. He made the celestial lamp or light -bearers 
out of material. He did not make the light out of 
material, new, or preexisting; He simply bade it 
send through the universe vibrations like those of 
a musical chord. How majestic and magnificent! 
"In the beginning God;" "In the beginning God 
created;" "In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth;" "In the beginning God 
said, *Be light,' and light was." He kept the 
sacred writers from the mistakes that mere observ- 
ers would have made, and that they did make 
when they began to teach natural science. There 
was in Infinite Intelligence and Omniscience behind 
the ignorance of Moses, which guarded his pen 
from making any of those fatal mistakes that 
would have marred the Word of God through all 
the ages. 

The 28th and 38th chapters of Job, two chapters 
in what is probably the oldest of all poems, have 
been declared to contain more science than the 
whole literature of the human race up to the Chris- 

49 



God's Living Oracles 

tian era, and some of the most remarkable anticipa- 
tions of scientific discovery are to be found there. 

Several great discoveries of modern times could 
not, in the nature of the case, have been known to 
any writers of the Bible ; and yet the phraseology 
of the Bible is found in every case marvellously 
accommodated to them. The discoveries referred 
to are such as the following: The vast number of 
the stars and the immensity of space ; the universal 
laws of motion and rotation, the nature and proper- 
ties of light, and of lightning the weight of the at- 
mosphere, and the circulation of the blood. 

(i .) The vast number of the stars. This is entirely 
a modern discovery. The first reliable catalogue 
of the stars was made by Hipparchus, about 150 
B. C, and the second by Ptolemy about 150 years 
after Christ. Both these catalogues give, in the 
entire southern and northern celestial hemispheres, 
about 3,000 — a very easy number to count, and 
there was then no idea of any other stars invisible 
to the naked eye. When Galileo turned his tele- 
scope toward the heavens on the 7th of January, 
1 6 10, for the first time it was known that there 
were stars never before seen; he saw the four 
satellites of Jupiter, and announced his remarkable 
discovery. From this point, as telescopes im- 
proved, discovery went forward until now it is 

50 



The Bible and Science 

known that the stars are absolutely countless. 
When the elder Herschel erected his monster 
telescope, forty feet in length, and turned it to the 
heavens in 1789, he talked of "star dust." He 
threw new light on the Milky Way and the constitu- 
tion of nebulss, and, in fact, was the first to give 
to the human mind any conception of the immens- 
ity of the universe. He found that what appeared 
to be dust on the surface of the firmament, was 
simply groups of stars so thickly crowded that 
they could not be distinguished by the naked eye. 
When Lord Rosse mounted his giant reflector, 
weighing twelve tons, in his park at Parsonstown, 
in 1845, within the range of its speculum, he 
computed that about four hundred millions might 
be rendered visible, and yet that was only the 
third great stage in discovery of their innumer- 
able multitude.* 

The Milky Way, floating its white banner across 
the firmament, is a vast host of stars seen edgewise, 
stretching away into infinite space, and nobody 
can trace that to its limit; our little solar system 

♦As to the number of stars, Herschel computed that in one hotir 
116,000 passed over the field of his telescope. Up to the sixth and 
seventh magnitude, they number 14,000, but beyond that, are coimtless 
multitudes only revealed by most powerful telescopes, and others that 
photography reveals, too far off to be seen even by the telescopic eye, 
and whose rays as they now reach our eye, started on their journey long 
before we were bom, perhaps thousands of years ago. 

51 



God's Living Oracles 

is but an atom in what Mr. Proctor calls, "the 
luminous sand of the Milky Way." It is, 
therefore, literally true that the stars are countless. 
This is a notable modern discovery, first hinted 
at by Galileo; yet the Bible anticipated it as far 
back as the time of Abraham. When God appeared 
to him and gave him the great covenant promise, 
he told him that his seed should be ultimately as 
numerous as the "dust of the earth" and the 
"stars of the sky." There must have seemed to 
Abraham a great difference between the number of 
the stars and the number of the atoms of dust, yet 
they are alike countless. God knew these facts 
when He told hira that his terrestrial seed should be 
as numerous as the dust, and his celestial seed as 
numerous as the stars. But it was reserved for 
remote generations to find that both comparisons 
are equally apt. So Jeremiah wrote (xxiii .'22), "As 
the hosts of heaven cannot be numbered, neither 
the sand of the sea measured," — comparing the 
host of stars to the grains of sand on the sea shore. 
The language of the Holy Scriptures is thus 
exactly adapted to facts not then known, but as 
unfolded by recent astronomical investigation. 
The enigmatic expressions of the Old Testament 
waited for a score of centuries for a scientific 
interpreter. 

52 



The Bible and Science 

(2.) The Immensity of space. Of this the 
ancients had no idea. They supposed the earth 
to be stationary, and the whole of the celestial 
bodies to move around it once in every twenty- 
four hours; and that the "firmament" was a firm 
or solid sphere as of metal, and the stars, points of 
light, or lamps, hung in the concave as in a dome; 
they had no conception of these immeasurable, 
inconceivable dimensions and distances. 

It began to be noted, however, that as some of 
the stars were fixed, — did not change their relative 
position, notwithstanding the change of position 
of the earth in its orbit — they must be at immense 
distances. The earth being about ninety millions 
of miles from the sun, has an orbit of some hun- 
dred and eighty millions of miles diameter. Even 
the modern era of the telescope only began to 
reveal the immensity of space. Some further 
conception of it is furnished in the fact that the 
unit of measurement, as to the distances of the 
stars, is the velocity of light. Light moves 186,000 
miles a second; yet even that is too small for a 
unit of measurement; astronomers have to take 
for this purpose the distance over which light 
travels in a year, or over 60,000 times the distance 
of the earth from the sun. That is the unit of 
measurement, so it is customary to say that a 



God's Living Oracles 

Centaurus is four years off as light travels, Arc- 
turus, 25 years off, Polaris, 46 years off, and 
Canopus, 108. 

Yet even this immensity of space is similarly 
anticipated in the Word of God! For example, 
Jeremiah says (xxxi: 37), "If the heavens above 
can be measured, and the foundations searched out 
beneath, I will also cast off the seed of Israel." 
He used the boundless immensity of space as the 
argument for God's boundless fidelity to His 
people. When man can measure the heavens 
above, then will God's care for Israel as His 
beloved people find its limit. Here the immeasur- 
able spaces of the heavens are assumed. So, in the 
55th chapter of Isaiah, verse 9, it is said, "As the 
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways 
higher than your ways, and My thoughts than 
your thoughts;" that is to say, the infinite height 
of heaven above the earth becomes the symbol of 
the infinite height of God's grace above the deserts 
of man. Again, in Psalm cm: 11, "As the heaven 
is high above the earth, so great is His mercy 
toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is 
from the west, so far hath He removed our trans- 
gressions from us." The writer of the 103rd 
Psalm himself had no conception of what is known 
by us — that go as far as you will to the east there 

54 



The Bible and Science 

is still an east, and as far as you will to the west, 
there is still a west; but God who spoke through 
him knew that only when you can measure the 
distance between the remotest east and west can you 
measure how far away from the forgiven sinner God 
has removed his sins, — astronomical infinities are 
brought in to illustrate the infinity of the love and 
grace of God! There is no accident about that! 
It is manifestly intelligent design. 

(3.) The Universal Law of Motion is a difficult 
subject to touch upon in a brief space. No dis- 
covery of modem times has been, in some respects, 
more startling. Science constructs a sort of vibra- 
tory ladder according to the number of vibrations 
per second, running from sixteen and a half up 
to 480,000,000,000 — those of the violet ray of light. 

Beginning at the lowest audible note and going 
up eleven octaves, the limits of sound are reached 
at 38,000 vibrations to the second. Then, passing 
an unknown region, electricity is reached with 
about one hundred million vibrations; then dark 
heat, about 130 thousand million vibrations; then 
comes the octave of colour, corresponding to the 
octave of sound, the red rays with about 400 
thousand millions and so on up the spectrum to 
violet with 480 thousand millions. These vibra- 
tions, it is claimed, have been at least approxi- 

55 



God's Living Oracles 

mately reckoned or calculated. Thus not only sound 
is found to be the result of vibration, but likewise 
electricity and heat, colour and light. The ear does 
not detect colour, as it does sound, because the 
auditory nerve is less sensitive and delicate than 
the optical. Light really sings, only our ears are not 
attuned to its melodies and harmonies; we do not 
hear but see it. But light and sound are closely 
•akin, both of the same nature, both produced by 
vibrations such as those of the chords of a musical 
instrument. Bible language singularly anticipates 
even this discovery. In Job xxxviii 7 we read 
that "the morning stars sang together," — "gave 
forth vibrations," like a musical instrument, as 
the Hebrew word literally means. Again, in 
Psalm Lxv:8, "Thou makest the outgoings of the 
morning and evening (sunrise and sunset) to give 
forth vibrations." The translators rendered it 
"rejoice," but the fact is that Nature, like a great 
orchestra, gives forth vibrations in different notes 
and chords of colour, which peal into the ears of the 
Lord God of Hosts; every morning sunrise and 
every evening sunset are as choral anthems in His 
ears! and they would be so in ours if our ears 
were delicate enough, as perhaps they will be, in 
the body of glory, in the future life, to detect this 
"music of the spheres." 

56 



The Bible and Science 

The poetic language of Holy Scripture thus again 
anticipates or forecasts one of the most recent and 
striking of all raodem discoveries. To such 
scientific facts is adapted the language of the 19th 
Psalm, verses 1-3. "The heavens declare (or speak 
forth) the glory of God. Day uttereth speech unto 
day, and night showeth knowledge unto night." 
"There is no speech or language where their voice 
is not heard," etc. The psalmist is describing the 
sun, moon and stars in the heavens, and their 
radiations of light, in the language of song and 
anthem, speech and conversation. God knew 
from all eternity that light and sound were akin, 
and it is natural that He should so guide the 
writers of the Bible that their words should 
accommodate themselves to all these marvels of 
scientific fact not to be known for milleniums 
afterward. 

4. The Refraction of Light is another discovery^ 
comparatively modern. Ptolemy, the astronomer, 
is credited with the first intimation of it. Refrac- 
tion is the bending of the ray out of its direct 
course as it meets different media of transmission. 
If the sun's rays were not thus refracted, only the 
direct or perpendicular rays would reach the earth, 
the others glancing off and being reflected into 
space, so that man would get little benefit; but the 

57 



God's Living Oracles 

atmosphere surrounds the earth in strata or layers, 
and when the indirect rays encounter these at an 
angle they are caught and bent round, like the 
fingers of the hand, and so retained for use. That 
also seems forecast in the Bible. 

In the 38th chapter of Job, verses 12 and 13, "we 
read: "Hast Thou commanded the morning since 
Thy days, and caused the dayspring to know his 
place." The original suggests the idea of "coming 
up to his post in time," which is true to fact, for the 
diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis is so 
regular that the day dawn "has not varied the one- 
thousandth of a second, from the exact time due, 
for the last two thousand years." Then follow 
these words: "That it might take hold of the ends 
of the earth," literally bend round like the fingers, 
and so lay hold — poetic phraseology, but contain- 
ing within itself all the suggestion of the scientific 
truth of refraction. 

(5.) The Weight of the Atmosphere. The dis- 
covery of the law of gravitation has been com- 
paratively recent, but it was supposed, even after 
this force began to be suspected, that certain sub- 
stances, such as those that we call etherial and 
volatile, were not affected by it. Newton demon- 
strated that its action is universal. Galileo, before 
him, had found reason to believe the atmosphere to 

58 



The Bible and Science 

have weight, or gravity, but the thought had never 
dawned on the mind of the ancients, and no hint of 
it is found in Plato, Aristotle, or other philosophers 
of old time. In the Bible it is boldly stated, that 
it is a part of God's administration "to make the 
weight for the winds" (Job xxviii:35), literally, to 
"balance the winds" — exactly the fact — for by 
their weight they help to keep in equilibrium the 
great scales of the universe.* Thus, unknown to the 
ancients — undreamed of by their wise men — this 
fact is definitely affirmed in the mystic language of 
this old poem. 

(6.) The Circulation of the blood, discovered by 
William Harvey, in 1619, is, therefore, a very recent 
discovery. Certain rudimental facts about this 
system of circulation every school boy understands, 
such as that there are practically two hearts, each 
having two parts ; and that the auricles receive the 
blood from the veins, and the ventricles pulse the 
blood through the arteries. When the blood, 
forced out through the arteries, deposits its nutri- 
ment, it is drawn back through the veins, to be 
reinvigorated in the lungs. Thus one part of the 
heart is of the nature of a fountain or spring; but, 
there being no pulsation in the veins, the other 

*The weight of the atmosphere is found to be 14.73 lbs. to the 
square inch, and the total weight of the air, 11.67085 trillion lbs., or 
l-188,000,000th of the entire weight of the globe. 

59 



God's Living Oracles 

part is a receptacle — a cistern rather than a 
fountain — a reservoir for the reception of venous 
blood. 

Again, the lung is somewhat like a "pitcher," 
and the tube by which air enters it is like the spout 
of a pitcher. The lung is closely connected with 
the heart's cistern, and a great conduit carries the 
blood from the lung to the auricles. 

In Ecclesiastes xii : 6, 7 , the substance of this great 
discovery is hinted mysteriously by Solomon: "Or 
ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl 
be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, 
or the wheel broken at the cistern." What this 
means, we are told: "Then shall the dust return to 
the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto 
God Who gave it." These are four poetic descrip- 
tions of death. Life is a kind of quadruped, 
moving on four legs : the energy of the brain, the 
nervous system — cerebro-spinal and sympathetic; 
and the lung and heart systems, with their great 
mysteries of respiration and circulation. 

"Or the wheel broken at the cistern." In the 

East to this day are wells where a wheel pumps up 

the water through one pipe to discharge it through 

another. This is what the heart does, pumping up 

the blood through pipes of blue, to propel it 

through pipes of red, and long before William 

60 



The Bible and Science 

Harvey dreamed of the circulation of the blood, 
God inspired Solomon to use language which not only 
suggests the general facts of the heart's action but 
hints the two parts of the organ, the "fountain" 
and the * 'cistern," the ventricles and auricles. 
William Harvey himself might have coveted this 
inspired description as a poetic statement of the 
facts he made known to the human race. 

(7.) The Universal Law of Rotation. The diurnal 
rotation of the earth, already referred to, in passing, 
was not known to the ancients, who thought it a 
stationary body. Yet we read, for instance, *Tt is 
turned as clay to the seal, and stands like an 
embroidered garment." (Job xxxviii: 14.) The 
reference is to the cylindrical seal, which revolved 
somewhat as, in a printing machine, the cylinder 
that holds the type and the cylinder that holds the 
paper roll over each other, and so the paper takes 
the impression of the type, and stands forth in 
more or less beautiful forms. So the earth is re- 
volved as the clay under the seal, and takes the 
impression of the light and heat and appears like 
an embroidered garment. If this be the meaning of 
this rather obscure figure in Job, it suggests, 
thousands of years before this was known, the 
diurnal rotation of the earth. Moreover, all these 
stars and suns are ijipying. As the earth revolves 



God's Living Oracles 

on its axis every day, and in its orbit around the 
sun, once in 365 days, so the sun has its own axial 
rotation and its own orbit of revolution. But it 
was reserved for modern times to prove that in a 
similar manner the whole of the visible universe 
is in motion, all heavenly bodies circling about 
their respective centers and the universe as a whole 
through its orbit in incredibly long periods of time. 
Madler believed he had discovered the universal 
center, in the star Alcyone, in the little group of 
seven, called the Pleiades, and suggested that this 
star might be the throne of God. 

In the 38th chapter of Job, we read: "Canst 
thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades ?" The 
Pleiades were so called from "pleo," to sail, 
because the rising of this constellation brought 
spring rains, but the Chaldaic word means a 
"hinge," a "pivot," an "axle," the word meaning 
what moves itself and moves everything else with 
it. Here the language is accommodated to the fact 
of universal rotation and suggests that the Pleiades 
form at least one of the hinges, pivots or axles for 
this universal motion. 

(8 .) The Nature, Properties and uses of Lightning. 

For thousands of years lightning was to man 

nothing but a disastrous mystery accompanying 

violent storms and often doing immense damage. 

62 



The Bible and Science 

It was reserved for Benjamin Franklin to follow 
out the lines of previous experimental investiga- 
tion, until he proved that lightning could belaid 
hold of and utilized. His experiment with his 
kite, bristling with points, which he flew in the 
thunder storm, showed that this mysterious force, 
conducted down the string and gathered in the 
key at the end, passed with a spark and a slight 
shock into his knuckle; and so was suggested to 
him the device of the lightning rod, drawing down 
the wrath of heaven and turning it harmlessly 
into the earth, so often used in illustration of the 
work of the Lord Jesus Christ in Redemption. 
To that great discovery, we owe it that, in the 
twentieth century, lightning has become a motor, 
a messenger, an illuminator, and is fast becoming 
also a therapeutic agent for the discovery and 
remedy of disease. 

The discoveries in electricity since Franklin's 
day have come with such rapidity that they seem 
to surpass any previous unveiling of scientific 
truth. They constitute the wonder of the ages, 
and no one can tell what the next few years may 
develop in electrical science. 

But the ancients knew nothing about the 
lightning flash, which seemed capricious and 

lawless— it came, they knew not whence, and 

63 



God's Living Oracles 

went, they knew not whither; the lightning sud- 
denly appeared in connection with the storm, 
then vanished as suddenly as it came; it was im- 
possible to trace it to its dwelling place or deter- 
mine anything about its philosophy. Man has 
now found that he can summon the lightning and 
bid it go on his errands; that he can make it flash 
intelligence to the earth's ends; that he can control 
the artillery of heaven, draw down the volleys of 
destruction and make them the means of con- 
struction — his servants on the earth; that he can 
cause the lightning, which once destroyed and 
killed, to heal and make alive, — in fact, totally 
turning about this most destructive agent of the 
universe. 

Even this is forecast in the Holy Scripture! 
Look again to the 38th chapter of Job. Here in 
this old poem arises one of those lofty peaks of 
inspiration where God seems to set aside human 
instrumentality, and Himself appears as the 
speaker:* "Canst thou commission the lightnings 
that they may come and say to thee, Here we are? 
Canst thou inspire them with intelligence? Canst 

* Compare Mrs. Helen M. Spurrell's scholarly translation of the Old 
Testament, published by James Nisbet & Co., London, for which there 
was so little sale that the edition was sent to the paper-mill, and a copy 
can be found only in some secondhand book shop. No translation 
perhaps surpasses it in suggestiveness. 



64 



The Bible and Science 

thou give them understanding to obey thy 
behests?"* 

Other great discoveries are similarly anticipated 
in Scripture. For example, the correlation and 
conservation of force. 

Such expressions as these are found side by side 
with others: "He hangeth the earth upon noth- 
ing," when no one had suspected as yet that so 
balanced are the great correlative forces of the 
universe, centrifugal and centripetal, that the 
earth is hung in space upon nothing, and has no 
foundations ; its pillars are set in no sockets, because 
God has so arranged the invisible and silent work- 
ing forces that they keep the whole universe in a 
state of equipoise. 

While men are assaulting this Book of God, and 
speaking in terms, sometimes unmeasured, of what 
they call its errors and its absurdities, all the 
material worlds and forces of the universe stand 
as a great orchestra, pealing forth their anthem to 
Him, Who, in His infinite love and grace, gave 
such a revelation of His will to the sons of men! 
"In His temple doth every whit shout, glory !"t 

♦Job xzxviii;35. (Hebrew.) f Psalm xxix;9 (Hebrew). 



65 



CHAPTER IV 

The Bible and Prediction 

The first great moral question which demands 
an intelligent answer is this : Is there a God ? and 
the second is like unto it : Is this God's book? Has 
God spoken to man? No questions can transcend 
in importance these two, for they form the basis 
of all spiritual and religious thought and inquiry. 

It has been already conceded that the presump- 
tion is against the Bible as a divine book. The 
fact that other books have also claimed to be a 
supernatural product throws the burden of proof 
on the Bible itself and its defenders; and this is 
conceded in the challenge for investigation and in 
the treatment accorded to honest doubt as perfectly 
legitimate; but the Bible's challenge is a fearless 
one, for it confronts every questioner with evidence 
that ought to satisfy, and will satisfy, all sincere 
inquirers after truth. Prediction furnishes a bur- 
den of evidence that must stagger any unbeliever, 
this department of evidence so abounding with 
proofs, found in the Word of God, itself, as to 

make honest doubt impossible. 

66 



The Bible and Prediction 

As this book claims to be a royal message, issued 
to God's human subjects, it is of the highest conse- 
quence that as such it should be accompanied and 
authenticated by His royal signature and seal. 
Moreover, in accordance with the importance of 
the proclamation and the gravity of the crisis, is 
the importance that such signature and seal 
should be obviously affixed to the document, so 
that all whom it concerns may be satisfied that it 
issues from the King. Because the Bible claims 
to be God's word toman, and to treat of the most 
serious subjects that can claim our consideration, 
it is correspondingly necessary that its authentica- 
tion should be absolutely beyond a reasonable 
doubt, otherwise it would be unreasonable to be- 
lieve in and accept it. A supernatural book must 
have supernatural attestation; the work must 
show the skilled workman, and be worthy of him; 
not a botch and a blunder, or a tissue of absurdi- 
ties, but such as might be expected of its great 
Author. An enlightened mind honours the bible 
by demanding such proof. Locke, in his essay 
on "The Human Understanding," well says, "to 
abandon the use of reason in matters of revelation 
is like putting out the eyes in order to use the 
telescope." 

There are two conspicuous methods, both super- 

67 



God^s Living Oracles 

natural, by which the bible claims to be attested: 
one is prophecy and the other is miracle. A 
prophecy — using the word now in the sense of 
supernatural prediction — is a miracle of word or 
utterance; a miracle is a supernatural work or 
performance: and each of them reveals God. A 
prediction reveals Omniscience, a miracle reveals 
Omnipotence, both of which are divine attributes; 
and, therefore, prophecy and miracle are fitting 
modes of attesting a divine document. 

It remains now to be proven that these methods 
of attestation have actually accompanied this 
book, and thus demonstrate that it is a super- 
natural revelation. 

Prediction has a special value as appealing to 
the rational powers, even of the unbelieving. 
Some other forms of attestation can be appreciated 
only by the believer, the Bible being something 
like a cathedral, whose richest beauties can be 
seen only from within. To understand the stained 
glass windows of such an architectural monument, 
it is needful to look at them from the inside, with 
the sunlight shining through them. But there 
are other beauties of the cathedral that may be 
seen from without. Prophecy is intended to call 
the attention of the reasoning mind to the mag- 
nificent and majestic proportions of the Bible, not 

68 



The Bible and Prediction 

only as seen from within but from without. Then, 
by first convincing the reader of its divine inspira- 
tion, it prepares him to enter within as a beHever 
and see other beauties as of stained glass windows, 
imperial columns, and groined arches. 

Prophecy, again, is of special value because it is 
permanent in its witness. Miracles which belong 
to a remote age were especially designed to lay 
foundations for the Christian faith; when such 
foundations were laid, these particular miraculous 
attestations would naturally cease in history. If 
repeated in subsequent ages, their frequency would 
imply diminution of their force, since the power 
of a miracle largely lies in the fact that it is extra- 
ordinary — an interruption of the ordinary natural 
process, and, if occurring too often, could, of course, 
no longer attract attention by its novelty and 
startling character. 

Prophecy, however, is a perpetual miracle. 
While other miracles lose force in proportion as the 
time of their occurrence is remote, prophecy in- 
creases in force as the interval is the more ex- 
tended between the prediction and its fulfilment. 
It is a significant fact that God should have put 
predictive prophecy as a seal upon His Word, so that 
any candid doubter, seeking for light, might find it; 

and so God perpetuates the evidence through the 

69 



God's Living Oracles 

ages. While the multipHcity and remoteness of 
miracles would decrease their force, the multi- 
plicity and remoteness of predictions increases 
theirs. 

It has already been claimed that no rational, 
sensible and candid mind can examine the evidence 
from prophecy, and yet account for the Bible as a 
merely human production. Why, then, is there 
so much doubt? First, because there is so much 
ignorance, and some of it wilful. Here is this 
book, containing within itself every necessary 
attestation of its divine character. Yet how large 
a portion even of the more intelligent classes spend 
more time on the daily newspaper than they do on 
the Word of God! Fictitious literature floods the 
market, and two-thirds of the books drawn from 
public libraries are said to be novels, which shows 
the trend of modern reading. How seldom is any 
proportionate and discriminating attention given 
to this divine Book. There would be few 
skeptics on the earth if this Bible were read as 
other literature is. 

Some who do not entirely neglect this book 
resort to evasive ways of interpreting its mys- 
teries, such as the poetic method, which sometimes 
means denying all literal interpretation, and 

evaporating predictions into vague and indefinite 

70 



The Bible and Prediction 

general statements. Some even venture to explain 
these predictions as shrewd conjectures, and their 
remarkable fulfilments as results of fortunate 
guesses; or they compare them to the forecasts of 
the weather prophet, who, having the records of 
the weather for many years previous, and carefully 
observing the phenomena of the present, is able 
sagaciously to predict to-morrow's atmosphere and 
cloudland. Examination will show how utterly 
unsatisfactory and untenable such explanations 
are, and that they all betray a lack of careful and 
conscientious examination of the subject. 

Biblical predictions have been fulfilled in history, 
and some of them in the history of our own times. 
They cannot be dismissed as ambiguous, "with 
double sense deluding," like the ancient Delphic 
oracles, for nothing is more clear and unmistakable 
than the statements found in the Word of God as 
to future events. These introductory remarks 
will be vindicated and illustrated as the investiga- 
tion proceeds. 

One remarkable fact is that God has not only 

attested prediction by fulfilling it historically, but 

has often used professed skeptics to record such 

fulfilments. Out of the mouths of enemies of the 

Christian religion have come some of the main 

confirmations and attestations of the accuracy of 

71 



God's Living Oracles 

biblical predictions! Volney, an infidel, who held 
the human origin and essential falsity of all 
religious systems, and scouted all idea of a super- 
natural revelation, has left on record some of the 
most accurate observations of facts, verifying 
many prophecies of Holy Scriptures. He went to 
oriental lands, described what he saw accurately 
and carefully and, taking views of ruins, became a 
sort of photographer of prophecy ;* and Gibbon, the 
infidel historian, has contributed scores of pages 
to similar confirmation of the word of God, all 
unconsciously and unmeaningly on his part. God 
also took the sun as His coworker and cowitness. 
The daguerreotype, invented early in the last 
century, has enabled many who cannot travel to 
foreign lands, to behold the remarkable fulfilments 
of prediction, brought near by the magic art of the 
camera, the sunlight reproducing those scenes of 
desolation which prove that God's word has been 
fulfilled. 

We are bidden to search the Scriptures whether 
these things are so. In the prophecy of Isaiah 
(xxxiv:i6) is a notable challenge: "Seek ye out 
of the book of the Lord, and read ; no one of these 
shall fail, none shall want her mate : for my mouth 
it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered 

♦ Volney s '* Ruins," published 1794. 
72 



The Bible and Prediction 

them." This is ordinarily taken to refer to those 
animals of which the prophet had been speaking, 
that in the desert of Idumea should hide among its 
ruins, each one calHng to its mate. But another 
rendering and reference have been suggested: 
"Search ye in the writings of Jehovah, and read. 
Not one of all these (His sayings) shall stand alone; 
not one (prediction) shall lack its counterpart (in 
fulfilment). For the mouth of Jehovah hath 
given (the decree), and His spirit it hath brought 
(prediction and fulfilment) together." 

Such is God's injunction, that the reader shall 
search out the words of Jehovah, as to coming 
events, and read, and then show one prediction 
that has not been fulfilled, save only such as may 
concern events yet future. Not one such predic- 
tion stands alone, — not one fails of its mate or 
counterpart, in the historic events. 

Can such coincidence be accounted for on the 
law of probabilities ? Is it possible that these 
predictions have simply come true by accident? 
The law of simple and compound probability is 
familiar to those who know the common principles 
of mathematics. A single prediction made, con- 
cerning future events, may or may not prove 
accurate; hence simple probability represents the 
chance of its coming to pass by the fraction, one- 

73 



God's Living Oracles 

half, or one chance in two. For instance, if it 
were predicted that this will be a year of marine 
disasters, the prediction has a half chance of 
accomphshment. But if it be added that these 
marine disasters will be in the Atlantic Ocean, as 
each item can have at most only its half chance, 
we are in the realm of compound probability, and 
must multiply one-half by itself, which gives us 
one-quarter chance. If another item be added, 
that these disasters are to be in February, we have 
at best one chance in eight ; and so on, as each new 
particular is added, multiplying again by one-half. 

In the prophecies about Tyre, Philistia, Babylon, 
Nineveh, Egypt, etc., there is an average of forty 
different details in each case, so that one-half must 
be raised to its corresponding power to express the 
insignificant fraction of probability that so many 
particulars will be realized in any one event. The 
numerator will be one, with a denominator of 
hundreds of millions. It is needful only to make 
such a simple calculation in arithmetic, to know 
that these things could not come to pass by a mere 
accident. To attempt to throw discredit upon 
such a body of prediction, shows either the stupid- 
ity of the fool or the trickery of the knave. 

In applying criteria by which to test prophecy, 
the more severe the better, that there may be no 

74 



The Bible and Prediction 

room for doubt on the part of any candid inquirer. 
There are four such criteria, but the test will be 
still more decisive if we add a fifth. 

First, Remoteness of Time. In order that 
there shall be no possibility of any efficient agency 
on the part of him who predicts the event , in bringing 
it to pass, there must be such separation between 
the prediction and the fulfilment that the prophet 
can have no power, directly or indirectly, to influ- 
ence the result. 

Secondly. Minuteness of Detail. The particu- 
lars of the prophecy should be so many and minute 
that there shall be no possibility of accounting by 
shrewd guess-work for the accuracy of the fulfil- 
ment. 

Thirdly. Novelty of Combination. There should 
have been nothing in previous history which 
makes it possible to forecast a like event in 
the future. There must be something new in the 
combination; something fresh, startling and origi- 
nal in the prediction and the method of its fulfil- 
ment, to prove divine intervention. 

Fourthly. Mystery of Contradiction. That is 
to say, when the prophecy is examined carefully, 
it shall present such paradoxes or apparent con- 
tradictions, that it is impossible to understand the 



75 



God's Living Oracles 

prophecy fully until the events have supplied the 
key to its mysteries. 

Fifthly. Clearness of Forecast — that there shall 
be such perspicuity of statement as not to be 
ambiguous, but obvious in its general meaning; 
and that especially, when the event occurs, it shall 
be seen to correspond without question to the 
original prediction. 

These are confessedly severe tests, and yet by 
them every prophecy of the Holy Scripture may be 
tried and not fail. Prediction finds its mate — 
the historic event; there is close correspondence 
between the forecast and the fulfilment. 

We turn attention, first, to certain prophecies 
of the Bible which center or cluster about the Jews ; 
noting in advance, that this is true of most pre- 
dictions. We may put in the center of the whole 
prophetic scheme, the word "Israel," for even the 
few predictions which have to do with the world 
kingdoms are not disconnected with God's chosen 
people — ^the Jews. The uniqueness of the scheme 
of prophecy is found partly in this unity: it does 
not consist of scattered fragments without system, 
but Israel stands as its crystallizing center. 

On the southwest of Judea, lay Egypt and 

Arabia; on the southeast, Moab, Ammon and 

Edom or Idumea; on the east and northeast, 

76 




^^.E. 



The Bible and Prediction 

Babylon and Nineveh, on the north and west, 
Phihstia and Samaria; and on the northwest, Tyre 
and Sidon and Phoenicia. 

Tyre & Sidon Babylon 

Phoenecia Nineveh 

N.W. ^ ^ N. E. 



Philistia TTT 
& Samaria 



S.W. 



Egypt & Moab, Anunon & 

Arabia Edom or Idumae 

Thus Israel holds the center, with from ten to 
twelve nations ranged around. The offence of each 
of these nations was different and so was God's 
method of dealing with them. They all fell under 
His curse because of something that they had done 
toward Israel: Egypt keeping Israel in slavery; 
Philistia drawing off her strength and harassing 
her from the western border; Edom and Moab and 
Ammon interfering with her entrance into or 
progress in the land of promise, delighting in her 
destruction and decay; Babylon and Nineveh were 
the lands of captivity ; Tyre and Sidon, responsible 
for the introduction of the worship of Baal into 
Israel and Judah. 

God's punishment was "poetic retribution." 
As the rhyme and rhythm of one line correspond 

77 



God's Living Oracles 

with those of another, in versification, so, in their 
punishment there was such correspondence between 
the offence committed and the penalty exacted 
as showed that they were matched the one against 
the other, as when Haman swung from the very 
gallows that he built for Mordecai. 

Brevity forbids extensive quotations from the 
predictions written by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Nahum, 
Joel, Daniel, Isaiah, and others, concerning these 
nations, which occupy scores of chapters. 

From the prophecies about Egypt two or three 
predictions may be chosen as a key to the rest; 
they occupy the 29th, 30th, 31st, and 32nd chap- 
ters of Ezekiel. A few expressions occurring here 
are very striking: Egypt "shall be the basest of 
the kingdoms . . . They shall no more rule 
over the nations." (Ezek. xxix: 15.) "I will 
make the river dry ... I will make the land 
waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of 
strangers." (xxx:i2.) And further in the 13th 
verse: ". . . and there shall be no more a 
prince of the land of Egypt." Here are a few 
among scores of particulars: Egypt, the largest, 
most distinguished and most exalted of ancient 
kingdoms was to become the basest; the Nile 
Valley, which made it the granary of the world, 
was to become dry and desert ; where for two thou- 

78 



The Bible and Prediction 

sand years there had been a succession of native 
princes, there was to be no more a prince of its 
own land. What was more impossible, according 
to human conjecture? The most enduring monu- 
ments on earth had been erected by the Egyptians 
— witness those artificial mountains, the pyramids; 
and yet this kingdom that once led the nations 
of the world, that had the most ancient and most 
distinguished dynasty, is even now before our eyes 
the basest of empires. The Nile Valley was the 
granary of the world ; to-day its ancient bed is dry 
and eighty miles from the present channel, and 
another of the former beds is nothing but a sand 
heap, and the sand has drifted over that formerly 
fertile land until it has threatened to engulf the 
pyramids. 

The story of the Mamelukes that reigned in 
Egypt is a remarkable bit of historical fact. 
About the middle of the thirteenth century (1240), 
these Mamelukes were brought over by the Sultan 
into Egypt, a band of twelve thousand military 
warriors trained for arms. Four years afterward, 
they rebelled; they assassinated the Sultan and 
elected one of their own number to occupy the 
Egyptian throne. Even then the succession did 
not follow in the line of the reigning sovereign, 
but when he died or was displaced, another slave 

79 



God's Living Oracles 

from a fresh batch brought from Circassia was 
elected to the throne. There was not a ruler from 
the native princes of Egypt; and although, when 
the country was overrun by the Turks (15 17), the 
sceptre passed nominally from these Mamelukes, 
they continued as Egyptian Beys until 181 1, when 
the final blow was struck that demolished their 
power. 

This was poetic retribution, indeed, and could 
only be traced to the Lord God of Recompenses 
Who shall surely requite. Egypt had reduced the 
Israelites to slavery and compelled them to serve 
rigorously in bondage, and possibly they were the 
builders of those imperishable pyramids. How 
did the God of Recompenses requite Egypt? For 
three hundred years He gave up this country that 
enslaved His own people, to be governed by slaves, 
so that there was no more a prince of the land of 
Egypt — another example of predictions which do 
not stand alone, but find their companion fulfil- 
ments, their counterpart in historic events. 

In the prophecies about Philistia two or three 

features are prominent: (i). Ascalon, the great 

fortress, should be despoiled and destroyed, and be 

absolutely without inhabitant; (2) Ashdod, that 

resisted the longest of sieges (29 years), should be 

despoiled. Ascalon is uninhabited, although the 

80 



The Bible and Prediction 

niins offer a good shelter from the storms of sand 
and rain with which the Mediterranean coast 
abounds. Just outside Ascalon is a mud village of 
the Fellaheen, who, when asked why they did not 
seek a refuge there, said they believed genii and 
spirits inhabit the ruins, and they dared not go and 
live there. And so this great fortress is not only 
despoiled, but remains Uterally without inhabitant.* 
As to Tyre, — there was both an insular and a 
continental city by this name. The former stood 
on an island in the Mediterranean, half a mile or so 
from shore, compassed by impregnable walls 
washed by the sea at their base. This queen city 
of the Mediterranean could not be taken, as it was 
supposed. When Alexander followed Nebuchad- 
nezzar in assault upon it, (332, B.C.), enraged that 
this island stronghold so withstood his power, 
he built out a mole from the mainland, turning the 
island into a peninsula. He scraped the ruins from 
the site of the continental city and carried them 
into the midst of the sea, in order to accomplish 
his purpose. Both cities have been destroyed, and 
exactly as the prophet said, what is left is "a rock 
for fishers to spread their nets upon."! When 
Dr. Alexander Keith visited these sites, and sought 

*Zeph. II: 1-7; Zech. ix. 1-8, etc. 

t Jerem. XXV, xxvii : Ezek. xxvi-xxviii ; Amos i:9-15; Zech. ix: 2-4. 

8i 



God's Living Oracles 

a place where he might pitch his tent, he found this 

mole as smooth as a rock, and the fishermen at that 

very time spreading their nets upon it to dry, and 

he took a photograph of it which he has reproduced 

in his exhaustive treatise on prophecy. 

Herodotus says of Babylon that it had walls 

three hundred feet high, and seventy-five feet broad, 

so that three carriages could be driven abreast. 

There were eight miles of length between the river 

gates, the city standing over the bed of the 

Euphrates. Cyrus dug a great trench around the 

city, ostensibly as a bulwark for defense, but really 

to turn the waters into a new channel; and then, 

having successfully accomplished this engineering 

feat, exactly as was predicted, on a night of revelry, 

when the Babylonians were occupied with their 

own merriment, thinking their city impregnable, 

Cyrus and his army entered, advancing through 

the bed of the river, and from both ends of the 

channel at once. If, even then, those brazen gates 

had been closed, his army, caught in a trap, might 

have been destroyed ; but this failed to be done and 

in their wild mirth the inhabitants v/ere entirely 

unprepared to meet the foe. The prophecy 

(Jer. LI : 31) : "Posts shall run to and fro to inform 

the king in his palace that the city is taken at each 

end," was literally fulfilled when, almost simulta- 

82 



The Bible and Prediction 

neously, the army advanced into the city from each 
end of this river bed, and the posts, starting from 
both sides, encountered each other midway as they 
ran toward the king's palace. The dismayed 
people acted Hke cowards, even the king himself, 
locked up in his palace, voluntarily opening the 
doors. God had said: "I will open before him 
(Cyrus) the two-leaved gates," (of the palace) as 
He had also said, "The gates shall not be shut" 
(the brazen river gates). 

Another prediction about Babylon was: "Two 
things shall come to thee in a moment, in one day, 
the loss of children and widowhood."* In the 
midst of the siege, so determined were they not to 
be driven to extremities by famine, that they 
strangled fifty thousand of their women and 
children, reserving only sufficient to bake bread 
to carry them through the siege ; so that in one day, 
and as in one moment, the loss of children and 
widowhood came upon them, and there is nothing 
parallel to this in the history of mankind. 

Thus prediction is fulfilled as it concerns that 
group of nations of which the Jews are the center, 
Egypt, Babylon and Assyria; Edom, Moab and 
Ammon; Tyre, Sidon and Phoenicia. Egypt that 
reduced Israel to slavery, was punished by becom- 

*Isa. XLVn:9. 
83 



God's Living Oracles 

ing the basest of kingdoms, ruled over, about as 
long as the Israelites were held in bondage, by a 
race of Circassian slaves. Nineveh and Babylon, 
the lands of captivity, were to be destroyed, even 
their site unknown for many centuries. God said 
He would make Nineveh as a grave, and the great 
mounds rise on its site like huge graves in a 
deserted cemetery. Babylon was to be destroyed 
by the drying up of the Euphrates, and Nineveh 
by the inundation of the Tigris. There seemed 
no reason why these decrees should not have been 
reversed, Babylon's stream overflowing, and 
Nineveh's river drying up, but all took place as 
announced years before. 

Edom, Ammon and Moab harassed Israel on her 
border by wars and incursions, and by the seduc- 
tion to impurity, and their punishment was to be 
without inhabitant. Even the Rock City, whose 
sculptured temples and strongholds, cut into the 
solid bedrock, still exhibit marvels in comparison 
with which even St. Peter's Cathedral at Rome is a 
minor achievement — even Petra, exactly accord- 
ing to the decrees of prophecy, is inhabited only by 
the wild beasts specified in the predictions. 

As to Tyre and Sidon, that entangled Israel as 
well as Judah in Baal and Astarte worship, not only 
is Tyre like a "rock for fishermen to spread their 

84 



The Bible and Prediction 

nets upon," but the temples and idols of Tyre and 
Sidon have no representative worshippers. Here, 
again, are startling prophecies fulfilled to the letter, 
but we have as yet touched only on the outskirts 
of this great theme. 

The imperial seal of Almighty God is upon His 
Book. It fills the believer with awe, when he sees 
that this book has thus upon it the stamp of its 
Divine Author — the mark of heaven — the impress 
of eternity. Doubt and indifference can be ex- 
plained only by the fact of moral depravity. The 
ruins of Egypt, of Babylon, of Tyre, of Nineveh, 
all typify this sadder ruin of humanity. The 
rejection of the Word of God is due more to the 
heart than to the head. Compelled to confront 
such a mass of overwhelming evidence, there are 
those who shut their eyes to the glory that beams 
from these pages as from the very throne of God,* 
that they may continue in sin. They deny the 
inspiration of the Bible because they find it impos- 
sible to believe and accept it as an inspired revela- 
tion, and yet to go on comfortably in evil-doing. f 
First men do violence to conscience, and then make 
shipwreck of faith. Were there no sin in the 
world, there would be no skepticism. But the 
time is coming, in the final assizes of the universe, 

* Revelation v : 1-5. f I Timothy i : 19. 

85 



God's Living Oracles 

when the solemn question will be substantially 
asked: "What hast thou to say why sentence 
should not be pronounced upon thee according to 
law?" and it will be terrible in that day to be 
"speechless." God challenges all men to search 
His Book, to read and examine, to see whether His 
forecasts stand alone, unaccompanied by fulfil- 
ment; to observe how prophecy finds its mate in 
history, its counterpart in subsequent events; 
and so learn that it is because both the utterances 
of prophecy and the occurrences of history emanate 
from the same divine Mind, and obey the same 
decree of His inspiring spirit, that the predictive 
Word of God, and the providential Work of God, 
move together in such mystic eternal harmony. 



86 



CHAPTER V 

The Bible and Prediction — Continued 

The prophecies of Christ — the great body of 
Messianic prediction — are reserved for separate 
treatment. Before entering upon these, other de- 
partments of prophecy need, and are entitled to, 
special investigation, as constituting in them- 
selves phenomena of a remarkable character. 

First, there are important predictions concern- 
ing the Jews themselves — ^the center of the general 
prophetic scheme. As God's chosen people, they 
have an important relation to the history of the 
race, and an important destiny in connection with 
it. God therefore decreed that, while severely 
punished and chastened for their idolatries and 
apostacies, they should, as a people, be preserved 
and ultimately restored to His favour (Romans xi). 
The 28th chapter of Deuteronomy is a compre- 
hensive outline of prophecies about the Hebrew 
nation, containing no less than seventy particu- 
lars, most of which have already been exactly 
fulfilled; and others, referring to the final restora- 
tion of the Jews to their own land, and their re- 

87 



God's Living Oracles 

habilitation as a people, await future develop- 
ment, but, even now, seem fast approaching the 
period of their accomplishment. 

Seven marked predictions might be selected 
from those which are on record about the Jews ; 

1. They would be so sorely besieged by enemies, 
that women would devour their own children — 
fulfilled in the sieges of Jerusalem, both under 
Neubuchadnezzar, and under Titus. 

2. They would be rooted out of their land and 
carried afar into captivity, — fulfilled in the Baby- 
lonian and Assyrian captivities, but forecast, in 
part, in previous minor captivities, as related in 
the book of Judges. 

3 . They were not to find rest in any of the lands 
of their captivity, but be scattered abroad and 
driven hither and thither as wanderers among all 
nations. 

4. They were to be despoiled by their enemies 
and made a prey. So they have been in every 
land where they have dwelt; and if, as in Great 
Britain and the United States, they have been 
treated with more consideration, it is owing to the 
permedting influence of the Christian religion. 

5. They were to be a '* by- word," an "astonish- 
ment," a "hissing," in the nations where they 

were scattered. This again has proved true. 

88 



The Bible and Prediction 

They have been compelled in some cases even to 
wear a distinctive badge, and occupy what has 
been invidiously known as the "Jewish quarter." 

6. While scattered among all nations, they 
should still be separate. It is a strange historic 
phenomenon that this one race is the only one 
never yet incorporated in, or amalgamated with, 
the nations among whom they have dwelt. When 
Irishmen, Scotchmen, Germans and Italians come 
to America, in the course of a few generations they 
disappear as such, and become integral parts of 
one homogeneous American people. But the Jew 
remains still a Jew; save when by becoming a 
Christian, he ceases to be distinctively a Jew, 
and, marrying into Christian families, thus becomes 
incorporated with Christian Communities. 

7. They are to be ultimately restored to their 
own land, grafted back into their own olive tree, 
and to have restored to them the Covenant privi- 
leges which, during the times of the Gentiles, have 
been suspended. This remains to be fulfilled. 

Any one who is skeptical as to the inspiration 
of the words of Scripture, should consider whether 
it is possible that such a complex historic phe- 
nomenon as this would or could, without divine 
foresight, have been clearly foretold by Moses in 
one of the most ancient books of the human race, 

89 



God's Living Oracles 

and that this prophecy should not only have been 
fulfilled, but be fulfilling before our eyes at this 
remote period of time. Surely the foreknowledge 
of such facts must have been communicated by 
the omniscient God. It is said that, when one 
of the great monarchs of Europe asked his chaplain 
to give him, in one word, an evidence that the 
Bible was from God, that one word was: ''JEW.'' 

But, aside from the Jews and the prophecy 
which centres about them, there is a wider circle 
of prediction, embracing the whole race, and to 
which the earliest prophecies of the Holy Scriptures 
refer. In the ninth chapter of Genesis, 27th verse, 
it is written — "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of 
servants shall he be to his brethren. Blessed be 
Jehovah, God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his 
servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall 
dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be 
his servant." 

Here is indicated a threefold distribution of the 
human race: under Shem, Japheth, and Ham, the 
father of Canaan. Ham's descendants went to 
Africa; Japheth's into Europe; Shem's into Asia — 
three great streams of primeval civilization, 
beginning after the flood, flowing in different 
directions, and distributing population among the 
three continents then known. 

90 



The Bible and Prediction 

Noah, at this early period, forecast the history 
and destiny of the Semitic, Japhetic and Hamitic 
races of the world. 

"Blessed be Jehovah, God of Shem." That 
implies some special relation of Shem to Jehovah, 
as a Covenant God. The Jews, who are of the race 
of Shem, became the earliest repositories of the true 
religion, and from them came, through Jesus 
Christ, who was of the Semitic stock, the Christian 
faith. 

"God shall enlarge Japheth." No other branch 
of the human race has known a like enlargement, 
both as to numerous progeny and as to extensive 
territory. The Japhetic peoples have been the 
one enterprising branch of humanity. The Semi- 
tic and Hamitic races have never so spread in 
colonies and by conquests over the face of the 
earth, as have the Japhetic from Europe into 
Asia, and America, controlling territory to such 
a degree that the Japhetic sceptre more than 
any other sways the world. The sun in his course 
never sets on his dominions, and surely Japhetic 
nations, which pride themselves on being fore- 
most in enlargement and conquest, will not question 
the antiquity or veracity of the prophecy, uttered 
by Noah. 

"He shall dwell in the tents of Shem." The 

91 



God's Living Oracles 

Semitic races were to be nomadic. Nothing is 
said about the "tents" of Canaan, or of Japheth. 
The nomadic races of the human family have prin- 
cipally been Semitic in origin. While they have 
dwelt in tents, Japheth has not only been enlarged, 
but has rapidly encroached upon them. By 
Japheth 's dwelling in the tents of Shem may be 
typically forecast also the fact that the Japhetic 
races have gone to the Semitic, for their religious 
faith. 

As to Canaan, it is three times averred that he 
shall be a servant of servants, to his brethren; that 
is, a slave — the lowest and basest of servants. The 
fact is indisputable, that the world's slaves have 
come, in the vast majority of instances, from 
the descendants of Ham. Terrible, indeed, have 
been the ravages of the slave trade, carried on 
round the coast of Africa, for which, during many 
years, both Great Britain and the United States 
were responsible, until, after many centuries, God 
chose, by the voice and pen of Wilberforce and his 
colleagues in Britain, and afterward by the hammer 
of Abraham Lincoln in America, to cleave the 
fetters from millions of bondsmen, and this blot 
was wiped off from their national escutcheons. So 
extensive has been African slavery that, if the 

entire number of natives sacrificed, in capturing 

92 



The Bible and Prediction 

victims in the Dark Continent, transporting them 
through the middle passage, and incorporating 
them as slaves with other peoples, were reckoned, 
their bodies would make a double row round the 
earth at its equator! 

When Noah, coming out of the ark to face a new 
world, became a second father to the race, God 
drew for him the great lines of civilization, which 
even to this day are indisputable historical verities. 

The second and seventh chapters of Daniel 
record two visions of the history of the world. The 
first was given to Nebuchadnezzar, as the first 
head of what the Bible treats as world-empire, in a 
dream, which he was unable to recall, but which was 
in a night-vision communicated to Daniel, also, 
together with its interpretation. The entire course 
of future world-empire was outlined — the six 
hundred years, between Nebuchadnezzar's as- 
sumption of the throne and the birth of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, with hints of a still remoter period. 
As these predictions are on record, it is easy to test 
them by the facts of history. 

This prophecy is remarkably framed. The first 
vision is under the figure of a colossal image, no 
doubt suggesting to Nebuchadnezzar the actual 
statue erected shortly afterward in the Plain of 
Dura. The head was of gold ; the breast and arms, 

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God's Living Oracles 

of silver; the belly and thighs, of brass; the legs, of 
iron; the feet, of iron and clay, divided into five 
toes on each foot, suggesting ten smaller kingdoms 
as the final outcome. 

The human head and breast are dual in structure 
— two eyes, two ears, two parts of the brain, two 
nostrils — and the upper part of the trunk suggests 
a more marked duality — two arms, two lungs, two 
sets of ribs proceeding from the sternum and 
uniting in the backbone, all this figuratively sug- 
gesting a dual empire. The legs suggest not only 
duality, but division and separation, finally carried 
to the point of subdivision of two into ten. 

This was a singularly accurate forecast of facts 
of history. Nebuchadnezzar represented a dual 
empire, the Assy ro-Baby Ionian, Babylon having 
succeeded to and incorporating the previous 
Assyrian with its glory. This was the head of gold. 

After this was the Medo-Persian kingdom, repre- 
sented by Cyrus, son-in-law to the Median king, 
and son of the Persian king. This was the breast 
and arms of silver. 

Alexander, the Macedonian, whose universal 
conquests made him the next in order of the world's 
emperors, represented a somewhat closer unity 
than was found under Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus. 
He represented the belly and thighs of brass. The 

94 



The Bible and Prediction 

end of the Macedonian era was the proper begin- 
ning of the Roman era, this empire incorporating 
into itself what remained of these previous world 
kingdoms and their glory. This new epoch is 
suggested in the two legs, which may well repre- 
sent the division of the Roman Empire into the 
eastern and western kingdoms, with their centers on 
the Tiber and the Bosphorous (395 A.D.) , remaining 
still, after over two thousand years, distinct, one 
from the other. The period when the feet divide 
into the ten toes, or the eastern and western king- 
doms ramify into ten others, is thought by most 
prophetic students to belong to the end of this 
dispensation, and immediately to precede that 
millennial kingdom of Christ which is to be erected 
on the ruins of all others.* 

Daniel saw a stone, cut out of the mountain 
without hands, smite the image on the feet of 
iron and clay, thus reducing the whole image 
to powder, which was swept away like the chaff 
from summer threshing floors; the stone itself 
becoming a great mountain and filling the whole 
earth. There seems here a distinction between 
*'regnum lapidis" — the kingdom of the stone — 
and ''regnum montis" — the kingdom of the moun- 
tain. The former, we are now under; the latter 

♦Daniel ii. 

95 



God's Living Oracles 

probably stands for the reign of Christ in the mil- 
lennium. The stone is already cut out without 
hands, but is not yet the mountain filling the whole 
earth. The smiting of the image is yet future, and 
the comminution process probably awaits the 
signal judgments at the end of this dispensation. 

The material degeneration of this image, from 
the gold of the head to the iron and clay of the feet, 
indicates a gradual degeneracy of the monarchial 
idea — exactly what history reveals. The strength 
of monarchy lies in absolutism — undisputed rule; 
its ideal is unlimited imperial power. Nebuchad- 
nezzar was such an absolute despot; but, in the 
days of Cyrus, the monarchial idea became mixed 
up and corrupted with the aristocratic ; and in the 
days of Alexander, the aristocratic further degen- 
erated into favoritism; until, in the days of the 
Romans, monarchy and aristocracy were leavened 
with republicanism, and at last developed into 
oligarchy approaching closely to anarchy. This 
gradual decline from the monarchial ideal is 
thus, under the figure of this image, traced from 
the original absolutism through the successive 
stages of degeneracy, till the final weakness is 
indicated in the brittleness of elements which, 
though combined, cannot be united or assimilated. 

In the seventh chapter of Daniel, the same 

96 



The Bible and Prediction 

truths appear, but under different symbols. What 
Nebuchadnezzar had seen outlined in a majestic 
image, Daniel saw forecast in a succession of wild 
beasts coming out of a stormy sea, which in the 
Scriptures stands for worldly society in commotion 
and revolution; the beasts, coming up out of it, 
indicating tyrannical, despotic and cruel tyrants 
and conquerers, or popular idol chiefs, who develop 
out of the midst of revolutionary conditions- 
Daniel saw first a lion with eagle's wings; then a 
bear — one-sided, with three ribs in its mouth; 
then a leopard with four wings and four heads; 
and last, a nondescript beast as strong as iron and 
using its strength with destructive violence. 
Why the difference of representation? To Nebu- 
chadnezzar, the monarch of the world, world- 
empire was naturally revealed as a gigantic figure 
of worldly majesty; but to Daniel, who by divine 
insight, could, through this deceptive glamour 
and glory, perceive the inward carnal corruption, 
bestial sensuality and cruelty, and God-defying 
arrogance of these world-empires — ^they were seen 
under the form of wild beasts. 

Accurate historical truth is again wrapped up 
in this imagery. The lion with the eagle's wings, 
still the symbol of Assyria, may be seen in the 
British Museum, taken out of the palaces of Nineveh 

97 



God's Living Oracles 

— exactly what Daniel saw as the representatives 
of the Assyro- Babylonian empire, — ^the only case 
in history where the lion has been thus sculptured 
with eagle's wings, — a lion for majesty of power; 
an eagle for swiftness of flight. 

The bear was one-sided, the Persian element 
dominating the Median; and the three ribs in the 
mouth, doubtless represent Babylon, Lydia and 
Egypt, devoured in cruel wars of aggression. 

The leopard, spotted to represent the variety of 
nationalities grouped under Alexander's con- 
quests, subtle and treacherous, stealthy, rapid and 
soft-footed in movement ; the four wings expressing 
wide conquests — north, south, east and west — 
and the four heads, the final division of the empire 
at Alexander's death among his captains, Cassan- 
der, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. 

These beasts were followed by the nondescript 
animal, representing Rome, — strong as iron, with 
teeth that break in pieces and bruise, and yet, 
doomed to grow weaker, and ultimately become a 
prey to other nations. 

These historical facts were thus embodied in the 
book of Daniel, in a double series of symbols, long 
before they became real in the annals of the race. 

The dream of Nebuchadnezzar and the vision of 

Daniel leave no room for honest doubt that He 

98 



The Bible and Prediction 

whose Omniscient eyes glance over the whole 
field of the future, and whose Providence shapes 
history, unveiled to this king and to His own seer 
the things that were to come to pass thereafter, 
and of which the students of history have since 
been, and are now, observers and witnesses. 

A brief resume of the argument may be not 
unfitting at this point : 

The Bible contains in both Testaments nearly 
one thousand predictions, of which seven hundred 
or eight hundred, perhaps, belong to the Old, and 
the rest to the New. Of these predictions, the ma- 
jority are already accomplished ; others being either 
in process of accomplishment or about to be ful- 
filled in times approaching. 

Applying the criteria as to remoteness of time, 
these predictions were recorded from four hundred 
to twenty-four hundred years before the events. 
As to minuteness of detail, on the basis of com- 
pound probability the possibility of a chance 
coincidence between prediction and event is so 
incalculably small that even mathematical figures 
fail to convey any adequate conception of it. 

As to novelty of combination, absolutely no 
precedents have been furnished by previous his- 
toric occurrences whereby any man, however 
sagacious, could have conjectured what was to take 



God's Living Oracles 

place. Such mystery of contradiction is found 
in the paradoxes these predictions present that 
even the seers themselves did not understand 
their own predictions, history alone being capable 
of interpreting their marvellous and mysterious 
characters. 

The argument from prophecy is designed to 
supply a natural rational basis for belief in a super- 
natural Being and a supernatural book. Such a belief 
is faith's forerunner, preparing its v/ay by con- 
vincing the reason; when as yet one cannot see 
clearly to accept the Bible as the word of God, and 
Christ as His Son, prediction marks out a path 
leading surely up to the vestibule where faith 
enters the temple of truth ; he who follows this path 
comes to a reasonable, intelligent faith, and an 
equally reasonable, intelligent obedience. The 
province of reason and the province of faith are 
thus mutual counterparts. 

Reason is first to determine whether the Bible is 
the Book of God ; then what it contains ; and then 
what relation its contents have to the reader. 
When reason has explored, and satisfied itself on 
these three matters, then the way is clear for faith 
to accept the Bible as the Word of God, and its 
contents in their relation to faith and life. If 
inscrutable mysteries are afterward found in the 

lOO 



The Bible and Prediction 

Bible which reason cannot comprehend or explain, 
the believer properly falls back upon the fact that 
he has found the book evidenced as the Word of 
God; and, as there must be in God's mind much 
that man's little mind cannot follow, it is no blind 
credulity but an intelligent and reasonable faith 
that still impels to self surrender. 

When it becomes necessary to have a serious 
operation performed upon the vital organs in order 
to save from death, what does a reasonable man do ? 
First of all, he finds out, on rational grounds, 
whether a surgeon of whom he has heard is com- 
petent to take his disease in hand, and deal with it 
skilfully. Then he satisfies himself that such 
surgeon is not a man of malice, and will take no 
opportunity, because of his patient's helplessness, 
to inflict any injury or unnecessary suffering. 
When a man has thus satisfied himself that the 
surgeon is skilful, experienced, competent and 
benevolent, he gives up himself to his care, lies on 
his operating table, inhales the anaesthetic, and 
leaves himself passive in his hands. 

Somewhat so God says to us: "Here is the 
evidence that I am God; that I have spoken; that 
the contents of this Book are My own utterances; 
are addressed to you, and have a vital relation to 
your spiritual well being in this world and in the 

lOI 



God's Living Oracles 

world to come." So now, having approached the 
vestibule of faith by this pathway of intelligent 
reason, one is prepared to submit himself to God, 
allow Him with full consent to take charge of him, 
and even to insert the knife that cuts away the 
cancer or the tumour, while he lies helpless in the 
great Physician's hands. He can trust Him to do 
what He will; and, if His processes transcend alike 
his own experience and intelligence, he remembers 
how he has previously satisfied himself that He 
is infinitely skilful, competent and benevolent; 
that in Him infinite wisdom makes mistakes of 
judgment impossible, and infinite love makes 
mistakes of malice equally impossible. His book 
may contain much that cannot be interpreted by 
present experience and finite intelligence, so that 
we cannot always tell what reasons lie behind 
His commands, or what possibilities lie in the 
scope of His promises; yet when we give up our- 
selves to Him, such implicit trust is not the fruit of 
credulity, but the triumph of reason, the natural 
outcome of an assurance created by intelligent 
inquiry. Such a believer is not the victim of a 
blind unreasoning confidence, but the victor over 
carnal unbelief, and the lies and wiles of the great 
adversary who is the maligner of God and the 
betrayer of man! 

I02 



CHAPTER VI 

The Bible and Christ 

The heart of our theme and the inmost core of 
the Bible testimony is The Person of the Son of God. 

However costly the casket which contains a 
pearl of great price, its value lies mainly in the 
gem that it holds. The greatest question of all 
as to the Oracles of God, is what witness do they 
bear to the Messiah ? The question whether Jesus 
Christ is the Son of God, and the Saviour of men — 
this the Bible answers with supreme care and 
absolute certainty. 

The whole Old Testament is pervaded by 
prophecies of Christ. Leaving the indirect pre- 
dictions for subsequent consideration, we now 
consider the direct forecasts concerning Him; and, 
because it is impracticable to examine the whole 
of this body of prophecy within such narrow limits, 
it may be well to select, almost at random, some 
leading passages from different parts of the Old 
Testament on which especially to concentrate 
attention. 

(i.) First of all, Genesis 111:15. Immediately 

103 



God's Living Oracles 

after the fall of man, occurs this primal prophecy 
of the seed of the woman — ^the promise of a 
Redeemer. This is also the germ of all messianic 
prophecy that follows, down to the close of Malachi ; 
hence it is well to look closely at this germinal 
prediction and conception. 

God said to the Serpent: "And I, Jehovah, 
will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
"And between thy seed and her seed: 
"It shall bruise (or crush) thy head, 
"And thou shalt bruise (or crush) his heel." 
This is a magnificent pictorial metaphor. It 
suggests a human form, with his heel upon the head 
of a serpent, crushing the life out of the head — 
his higher part — while the serpent is planting his 
venomous fangs in his victor's heel — ^his lower part. 
This shows how much a very short prediction 
may contain and suggest. It presents, in outline, 
the new representative seed, the Second Man, the 
Last Adam. He is the Seed of the woman — noth- 
ing is said about his being the offspring of the man 
— a significant omission, and the words of Jehovah 
which follow are addressed, first of all, to the 
woman, the coming Deliverer being specifically 
and emphatically called her "seed." There is to 
be eternal enmity between the principle represented 

by the serpent — the Devil — and that represented 

104 



Prophecies of Christ 

by the Seed of the woman. Again the Seed of the 
woman is to deal a death blow on the serpent, but 
the latter is to be permitted at the same time to 
inflict a sting upon the heel that crushes him. 
Last of all, this is all due to a divine arrangement : 
"/ will put enmity between thee and the woman." 

As the oak is germinally in the acorn, and the 
eagle in the egg, all subsequent Messianic prophe- 
cies of the Old Testament are here in germ. There 
is scarcely added, in the whole aftercourse of such 
prophecy, one idea that is absolutely new, other 
predictions growing out of and expanding this 
germinal prediction. 

Christ is further on revealed as a priest, but 
here His priesthood is foreshadowed in His wound- 
ing by Satan — He is a Vicarious Sufferer. Christ is 
to be a king; here the suggestion of His kingship 
is found in His victory over the Devil and his 
works. Thus, as the Messianic idea is followed 
out through the Old Testament, this germ is seen to 
expand and ramify, thus containing in substance 
all the others. 

(2.) Moses gives to the Children of Israel a pre- 
diction of a great prophet that is to arise : 

"The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a 
prophet, 

"From the midst of thee, 

105 



God's Living Oracles 

"Of thy brethren, like unto me. 

"Unto Him shall ye hearken." 

*'I, Jehovah, will put My words in his mouth. 

"Whosoever will not hearken unto My words 

"Which He shall speak in my name, 

"I will require it of him."* 

A great prophet was to be specially raised up by 
God to come out of the tribes of Israel, and to have 
a certain likeness to Moses ; but to be invested with 
unique authority as the mouthpiece of God; and 
to reject His authoritative utterances will bring 
the hearer into judgment. Thus, in one verse of 
twenty -eight words, we have a suggestive predic- 
tion of the coming Prophet, as in Genesis iii., of 
the coming Priest and King. 

(3.) The twenty-second Psalm. This is spe- 
cifically the Crucifixion Psalm, the one fragment 
of Old Testament scripture that plainly presents 
Christ on the cross. Here is a suffering victim; 
His hands and feet, pierced; stripped of His 
raiment, and partially nude so that others can 
look on His bones; they that pass by mock and 
deride Him, shooting out the lip; His mortal 
agony is attended with extreme thirst. The 
Psalm opens with the Atonement cry: "My God, 
My God, why hast Thou forsaken me!" and 

* Deuteronomy xviii : 15-19. 
106 



Prophecies of Christ 

another of his cries on the cross may be heard in 
the last verse: "Shall declare His righteousness 
iinto a people that shall be bom:" "It is 
finished!"* In fact, the seven sentences on the 
Cross may be found, at least suggested, in the course 
of this poem. 

More than this, it is a "Psalm of Sobs/'f The 
Hebrew shows not one completed sentence in the 
opening verses; but a series of brief ejaculations, 
like the gasps of a dying man whose breath and 
strength are failing, and who can only utter a word 
or two at a time: "My God — My God — Why for- 
saken me — far from helping me! — words of My 
roaring! — " There is something overwhelmingly 
pathetic in this Psalm, when the reader sees in it 
his suffering Saviour, gasping for life, unable to 
articulate one continuous sentence. From these 
lines tears seem to drip and blood seems to drop. 
The writer thus forecasts that mystery of the cross, 
which remained unsolved for a thousand years. It 
was like a dark cavern at the time ; but when the 
gospel narrative portrays Jesus as the crucified 
one, it is like putting a lighted torch in the cavern, 
revealing radiant crystals. 

(4.) The ninth chapter of Isaiah, sixth verse, 

* Original Hebrew, 

t Bishop Alexander, "Witness of The Psalms to Christ " 
107 



God's Living Oracles 

not known to be a prophecy of Messiah until it was, 
as such, quoted in the New Testament. 

"For unto us a child is born; 

"Unto us a son is given: 

"And the government shall be upon His shoulder; 

"And His name shall be called Wonderful, 
Counsellor, 

"The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, 

"The Prince of Peace." 

"Unto us a child is born" suggests the human 
nature of Christ; "Unto us a Son is given," that 
suggests the divine side; "And the government 
shall be upon His shoulder." here is kingship; 
"And His name shall be called Wonderful:" 
Matthew shows the correspondence between Him 
and the prophecies concerning Him; "Counsellor:" 
Luke introduces Him as Man's Friend and Coun- 
sellor. "The Mighty God:" in Mark He is seen as 
the Mighty Worker; "The Everlasting Father:" 
John shows Him identical with the Father, from 
Everlasting; "The Prince of Peace:" In the Acts 
of the Apostles the Prince of Life is seen, beginning 
His career of conquest, with spiritual and not 
carnal weapons. 

Here, then, are forecasts of His humanity, divin- 
ity and kingship; and his fivefold character as in 

the Gospel narratives and the Acts of the Apostles. 

io8 



Prophecies of Christ 

(5.) The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Twenty- 
seven continuous chapters, from the fortieth to the 
sixty-sixth, constitute one great Messianic poem 
of the Old Testament. The only divisions in the 
original are those marked by the refrain: "There 
is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." which 
recurs at the end of the first and the second third, 
dividing the poem into three about equal parts. 
In the center of the middle part, and so of the 
whole poem, is this fifty-third chapter — the one 
unquestionable prophecy of Jesus Christ as the 
Lamb of God, vicariously suffering for man.* 

Marvellous chapter, indeed! containing only 
twelve verses, yet fourteen times announcing the 
doctrine of vicarious sacrifice for sin: "He hath 
borne our griefs. — Carried our sorrows. — ^Was 
wounded for our transgressions. — Was bruised 
for our iniquities. — The chastisement of our peace 
was upon Him. — With His stripes we are healed. — 
The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. 
— Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, — 
By His knowledge shall My righteous servant 
justify many. — He shall bear their iniquities. 

The whole chapter overflows with this concep- 
tion and never was its mystery solved until the 
Lord Jesus Christ was made sin for us. Those who 

*Acts. VIII : 28-36. 
109 



God's Living Oracles 

question its reference to Jesus Christ, forget that 
the Holy Spirit, through PhiHp, taught the Ethe- 
opian eunuch that He is here meant, so that we 
have Him who inspired, also to interpret. 

This chapter is also an example of the mystery 
of contradiction, for it is a bundle of paradoxes or 
apparent contradictions, as numerous as the verses 
of the chapter. "He is a root out of the dry 
ground, yet fruitful; He has no form nor beauty, 
yet is the chosen servant of God ; He is despised of 
men, yet the appointed Saviour; He suffers unto 
death, yet He survives ; He has no offspring, yet has 
a numerous seed; He makes His grave with the 
wicked, yet is buried in the sepulchre of the rich; 
He suffers adversity, yet enjoys prosperity; He is 
triumphed over, yet He triumphs ; He is despoiled, 
yet He despoils ; He is cut off in the midst of His 
days, and yet prolongs His days; He is condemned 
Himself, yet He justifies the condemned. These 
paradoxes remained a problem until the cross was 
set up, and the sepulchre burst open, and the Son 
of God, Who came down to die, went up to reign. 
The suffering Messiah and the reigning Saviour 
are here seen as one, but the mystery of this union 
could by subsequent history only be made plain. 

(6.) Daniel, ninth chapter, twenty-fourth 



no 



Prophecies of Christ 

verse: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy 
people. 

"Know therefore, and understand, that from the 
going forth of the commandment to restore and 
build Jerusalem, unto the Messiah, the Prince, 
shall be seven weeks, and three score and two 
weeks." The Hebrew word is "heptades" or 
periods of seven. Seventy times seven years is 
four hundred and ninety. There are three or four 
ways by which the sacred number of years have 
been reckoned. One decree to restore and rebuild 
Jerusalem, went forth four hundred and fifty-seven 
years before Christ; if the thirty-three years of 
Christ's earthly sojourn be added, it gives exactly 
four hundred and ninety — four hundred and fifty- 
seven plus thirty-three. 

*Sir Robert Anderson gives perhaps the most 
satisfactory calculation yet made, showing that it 
was exactly to a day the four hundred and eighty- 
three years prophesied in the ninth chapter of 
Daniel, from the time of the going forth of the 
commandment until Jesus entered into Jerusalem 
in the capacity of the Messianic Prince, riding 
upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. 

(7.) Micah, fifth chapter, second verse: 

"But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou 

♦"Daniel in the Critics' Den." 
Ill 



God's Living Oracles 

be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of 
thee shall He come forth unto me that is to be 
ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from 
of old, from everlasting." 

Here is the prophecy of a governor to come out 
of Bethlehem. That village is to be the place of 
His birth, who is to be Ruler in Israel; yet He is 
one whose goings forth have been not only from 
antiquity, but from eternity. 

There is no question about whom that prophecy 
forecasts. But Christ's virgin mother did not live 
at Bethlehem, but at Nazareth; and it was not 
very likely that, on the eve of the primal sorrow of 
her sex, she would needlessly travel over hot and 
dusty roads from one village to the other. But 
the decree that the Roman world should be taxed, 
compelled all who were subject to taxation to go 
to the place from which the family hailed, and be 
enrolled; and so, although that tax was not col- 
lected till eight years later, God thus brought that 
virgin mother from Nazareth to Bethlehem at the 
precise time which would fulfill the prediction of 
Micah.* 

* Those " wise men from the East," came probably from Persia, the 
land of Daniel ; and, if they had Daniel's prophecy, they knew that the 
time for the Messiah's birth had about come, but if they had not also 
Micah's prophecy, which foretells it to be at Bethlehem, they might 
not have known where he was to be bom, and so they followed the star 
to Jerusalem to inqviire of the scribes there as to the place. 

112 



Prophecies of Christ 

Our selection has been limited to seven passages 
only from the Old Testament concerning Messiah: 
Gen. Ill, Deut. xviii, Psalm xxii, Daniel ix, Micah 
V, Isaiah ix, and Isaiah liii; and yet here is one 
consistent progressive unfolding of Messianic 
prophecy. The first contains the germ of the rest, 
outlining the general scheme of deliverance, 
through the woman's seed. 

Deuteronomy forecasts His prophetic office. 

Psalm XXII, the Psalm of the Crucifixion, the 
priestly. 

Isaiah ix, His double nature, as Child of Man and 
Son of God, — the kingly. 

Isaiah liii, His vicarious suffering for sin. 

Micah gives the place of His birth ; and 

Daniel, the time of His birth. 

Again we may apply the criteria of prophecy, 
heretofore laid down as tests: 

(i.) Remoteness of Time. Between the Old 
and New Testaments is a gap of four hundred 
years, during which no prophecies are recorded, 
which so divides the two periods as to make impos- 
sible any collusion between the Old Testament 
prophets and New Testament evangelists. Men 
cannot reach hands across the gap of four centuries, 
whether for good or evil purposes, either for com- 
bination or conspiracy ; and this interval of silence 

113 



God's Living Oracles 

makes sure that those who wrote the prophe- 
cies could have had no part in bringing the pre- 
dictions to pass. 

(2.) Minutiae of Detail. Over three hundred 
predictions about the Messiah are found in the 
Old Testament. According to the law of com- 
pound probability, the chance of their coming true 
is represented by a fraction whose numerator is 
one, and the denominator eighty-four, followed by 
nearly one hundred ciphers! One might almost 
as well expect by accident to happen to dip up 
any one particular drop out of the ocean as to 
expect so many prophetic rays to converge by 
chance upon one man, in one place, at one time. 
God has put especially upon these prophecies as 
to His Son, the stamp of absolute verity and 
indisputable certainty, that we may know whom 
we have believed. Mistakes in so solemn a matter 
are fatal and God meant that none should be 
possible. 

(3.) Novelty of Combination. Nothing was 

ever like this before. Never a human child who 

was also a Divine Son — at the same time wounded 

by the Devil and crushing him — never another 

who was appointed Saviour, yet crucified as a 

malefactor — Who died, and yet lived — could not 

save Himself, and yet saved others. Such para- 

114 



Prophecies of Christ 

doxes are not only without precedent, but defy 
explanation unless they refer to Jesus Christ. 

To sum up the argument, the prophetic Scrip- 
tures fully vindicate the honour and majesty and 
deity of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. This 
is a vital issue with every believer, since his salva- 
tion hangs on the truth of these prophecies, and 
the reality of the claims of the Son of God, and 
to one who devoutly searches for evidence, ample 
proof is at hand. 

The accuracy of prediction is most minute. 
As Christ was to be bom, He must be born of some 
of the families of the earth. Every time a new 
marriage issues in offspring, from some of these 
new branches of the family tree, one must be 
selected from which God's Messianic Flower is to 
spring and bloom. One mistake would be fatal. 
From Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, 
Shem is chosen; from Abraham's two sons, Isaac 
and Ishmael, Isaac; from Isaac's two sons, Jacob 
and Esau, Jacob; Jacob's family tree has twelve 
new branches and Judah is the fruitful branch. 
Every time prophecy makes a particular choice, 
there is new risk, humanly speaking, of selecting 
the wrong branch, and so of falsifying facts, and 
nothing short of absolute accuracy will do when 
God claims to speak. 

115 



God's Living Oracles 

Again Messiah must have a birthplace. Three 
continents — Europe, Asia and Africa — ^were known 
to the ancient world; Asia is chosen. But Asia 
has many countries — one of them is indicated, a 
little country known as the Land of Promise — 
Palestine or Syria. Here were three districts: 
Judea, Galilee and Samaria; it is Judea that is the 
elect one. But here again are many villages; out 
of these "thousands" the favoured one is little 
Bethlehem. But as Bethlehem means ** House of 
Bread," the name might stand for more than one 
village located in a fertile tract; and so, to make 
prediction more definite and certain, it is "Bethle- 
hem, in the land of Judah." The prophet puts 
his finger on one obscure village on the map of the 
world ; but he speaks infallibly, for the Omniscient 
God was behind his utterance. 

Messiah must be bom at some time. It might 
have been in any century and any year, but with 
absolute certainty the exact year is foretold. 

Old Testament prophecy is God's "Plant of 
Renown." It grows from its primitive germ, and 
branches into minute twigs and remains a mystery 
for many centuries. Just what it means and what 
it is there for, man knows not clearly. Now and 
then one of the old-time believers or godly men, 
like David, sees Christ dimly foreshadowed in 

ii6 



Prophecies of Christ 

these predictions; but when history comes and 
touches twig after twig, they burst into bloom; 
and now the Plant of Renown becomes a burning 
bush, and the place is holy ground. Inspired 
argument! Absolute certainty! Divine verity! 
There would be no honest infidel in the world were 
Messianic prophecy studied, nor any doubting 
disciple if this body of prediction were understood. 
Here is God's Rock of Ages, whether or not we 
know how unshakable is faith's standing place, and 
how needless it is to be discouraged when attacks 
are made on the Word of God. 

Sometimes history seems to have been moved 
backward, and the tragedy of the suffering of 
Christ is re-enacted. Men are again striking Him 
with the rod, spitting in His face, passing Him by 
and deriding Him. And alas! He is being also 
wounded even in the "house of His friends," and 
crucified afresh before a dying world. Well may 
we therefore rejoice to vindicate His assaulted 
majesty and dignity by appealing to those Old 
Testament prophecies concerning Him, which are 
to a candid mind so conclusive and convincing. 

One seldom meets an unconverted inquirer who 

seems absolutely without prejudice on religious 

subjects. Once a young Japanese came to the 

writer of these pages. He had been sent over by 

117 



God's Living Oracles 

his government to study questions of Western 
civilization, philosophy and science. He had 
found that his Buddhism would not stand investi- 
gation, and, satisfied that it was a false faith, had 
cast away his idolatry and superstitions — a man 
absolutely without any religion. Infidels there 
are a plenty, but they are not without a religion of 
their own, for infidelity is the worst kind of a false 
faith, with the worst sort of a creed. They who 
affirm that they believe nothing, believe the most 
incredible things. But this man was no infidel. 
He had cast away his idols to the moles and bats 
and abandoned his ancestral traditions, but his 
mind was like a sheet of blank paper on which truth 
might be written, and his frank words revealed his 
condition: "I have heard something of Christian- 
ity and I want to know whether it is the true 
religion." With Bible in hand we together went 
over the body of Messianic prophecy. A little 
book prepared for doubting minds — "Many Infalli- 
ble Proofs" — was put into his hands and he went 
away, but came back shortly after a firm believer 
in Jesus Christ, and afterward returned to Japan to 
teach his countrymen how the prophecies of the 
Old Testament found their accomplishment in the 
Christ of the New; and that without doubt the 

Book is inspired, and Christ is the Son of God. The 

ii8 



Prophecies of Christ 

path by which he arrived at that rational faith was 
the study of Messianic prediction. 

It is of vast importance to get before every man 
and woman the scope of this argument — this most 
neglected department of study — the prophecies of 
the Old Testament with regard to the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

A double argument is found in them: first they 
absolutely authenticate the Old Testament as an 
inspired book; and, second, they absolutely authen- 
ticate Jesus Christ as the Son of God. It is alike 
inconceivable that such a body of prophecy could 
have been mere guess-work or have found its 
place in any merely human production; and that 
so many predictions should point forward to one 
individual in the future, who is either a knave or 
an impostor, a deluded fanatic or an insane fool. 
The prophecies move as in procession before the 
Person of Christ and, like soldiers, salute Him as 
their general-in-chief, and He, to whom they thus 
pay homage, must be none other than He "Whose 
goings forth have been from of old, even from 
everlasting. ' ' 

These are only, however, direct predictions, and 
but a few even of them ; but they suffice to banish all 
reasonable doubt when we consider the remote- 
ness of the time in which they were spoken; and 

119 



God's Living Oracles 

the surprising minuteness of detail to which they 
descend, even to His birth of a virgin mother, the 
number of pieces of silver given for His betrayal, 
His silence before His accusers, and His meek and 
unresisting submission before His crucifiers, the 
dying sentences on the cross, the hooting, mocking, 
insulting language of those that passed by, the 
piercing of hands and feet. His agonizing thirst, 
the double disposition of His raiment.* In view 
of these and hundreds of other particulars, suc- 
cessively unfolded during the long period covered 
by Old Testament writings, it is absolutely incon- 
ceivable that all this could have been a mere chance 
coincidence of forecast and fulfilment. 

She was an extraordinary Queen who lately sat 
on the throne of the British Empire, and for a 
longer time than any other monarch of history. 
At the time of her coronation, there was a series 
of magnificent festivities in honour of her accession 
to the throne, and, last of them all, the perform- 
ance of that great oratorio of "The Messiah," 
which is such a favourite with British audiences. 
The Queen presided, and she had been told by those 

* Here is another paradox, "They parted my garments among them, 
and upon my vesture did they cast lots." Psa. xxii:l,8. If they 
parted His garments, why did they need to cast lots? They distributed 
the lesser attire, but as to His circular, seamless robe, they said : " It is 
a pity to rend it; let us cast lots whose it shall be." So the double 
prophecy was literally fulfilled. 

I20 



Prophecies of Christ 

who were familiar with court manners that, though 
it is customary with the British public to arise, when 
the opening notes are struck of "The Hallelujah 
Chorus," and to remain standing until it is finished, 
it would be a violation of her Imperial dignity if 
she should rise with the multitude, as it is the 
royal prerogative to sit when others stand. When 
the chorus began, and the great multitude rose 
to their feet, she yearned to stand up and so 
confess with them her allegiance to the Messiah in 
whose honour the chorus was sung ; but she remem- 
bered her instructions, and the modest young 
woman, who was scarcely yet familiar with royal 
dignity, kept her seat as the words rang out, 
"Hallelujah, Hallelujah, For the Lord God Omni- 
potent reigneth." But, when in the last part of 
the chorus, the words pealed out — "King of Kings, 
and Lord of Lords," she forgot her court instruc- 
tions and her royal dignity, and, rising to her feet 
and folding her arms across her breast, she bowed 
her head with the crown of empire upon it. 

To a devout believer, the whole Bible is one 
Oratorio of the Messiah. Prediction joins pre- 
diction in one Hallelujah Chorus — "Hallelujah, 
Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent 
reigneth." And, as the climax is reached, and the 
promised Seed of the woman and the crucified 

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God's Living Oracles 

Christ is seen to be the King of Kings and Lord 
of Lords, he cannot maintain an attitude of indif- 
ference. He must join the great cloud of witness- 
bearers and cannot keep silence, and he sings: 

"Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown Him Lord of All." 



laa 



CHAPTER VII 
The Bible and Indirect Forecast 

The waters of the Pool of Siloam, outside of the 
city of Jerusalem, have their fountains under- 
neath the ancient site of the temple on Moriah. 
Those springs discharged their waters through a 
subterranean passage and came up in Siloam's 
Pool — then, again following an underground con- 
duit, appeared in another pool farther on; and 
then, following still another subterranean passage 
to the Gardens of Solomon, distributed their irriga- 
ting and fertilizing influences and promoted fertil- 
ity. Dr. Edward Robinson, of New York, crawled 
on his hands and knees through this subterranean 
passage, in order positively to ascertain whether 
such hidden channels existed. 

The Messianic Conception, springing from be- 
neath the Throne of God, follows hidden channels, 
coming up now and then in clear, direct messianic 
prediction; then, following other courses beneath 
the surface, opens up in Messianic history, and so 
waters and fertilizes the whole Garden of the Lord ; 

and when the student, in a devout frame of mind, 

123 



God's Living Oracles 

studies, under the control of the Spirit, the prophecy 
and the history, and traces even those concealed 
and indirect suggestions of the coming of Christ, 
he finds everywhere new unfoldings of the Messi- 
anic idea. 

These Indirect Prophecies about the Lord Jesus 
Christ now claim attention. Two passages of 
Scripture at the outset need careful comparison. 

In Luke xxiv, we have a record of an in- 
formal discourse of our Lord, while going with 
two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus. On 
that occasion of His post-resurrection appear- 
ance and converse — "beginning at Moses and all 
the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (verse 
24). Still more definitely He said: "All things 
must be fulfilled which are written in the law of 
Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms con- 
cerning Me" (verse 44). 

The Old Testament scriptures were popularly 
divided into these three main parts: (i) The 
Law, or the historical books; (2) The Psalms, or 
the poetical; (3) and the Prophets, or the pro- 
phetical. This division, though not exact, was 
the current way of classification, and is still fol- 
lowed in the Hebrew Old Testament. Christ, 

therefore, showed His disciples how they could 

124 



Indirect Forecasts 

start with Moses — the beginning — follow the 
course of the Law or historical writings, pass 
into the Psalms, the poetical and devotional, 
and then through the whole group of prophetical 
books, and in all those scriptures trace things con- 
cerning Himself which must needs be fulfilled. 

Where our Lord has spoken, it is ours to be 
silent, hear and learn. If any one doubts or 
denies that there are such intimations in the Old 
Testament scripture, it is enough to refer him to the 
authority of the Master. It must take nothing 
short of audacity to venture any such denial in 
face of this post-resurrection assurance from the 
Lord Himself. 

How did this discourse come to be known to 
Luke? The Lord promised that the Holy Spirit 
should bring to their remembrance the things that 
He had said to them; and ordinarily it is safe to 
infer that, where anything is recorded, the party 
recording it was present on the occasion ; and there 
is little reason to doubt that it was Luke himself 
who was with Cleopas, and was the other unnamed 
disciple who, on this journey from Jerusalem to 
Emmaus, heard these marvellous words of Christ. 

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, there is what 
seems to be the substance of this discourse of our 
Lord to these two disciples. AU readers of the 

125 



God's Living Oracles 

Word have felt how gladly they would have been 
w:th those three, that day, and had their hearts 
burn within them "while He opened to them the 
Scriptures;" and the question has often been raised 
whether there is any hint in the Bible of what 
Christ said on that occasion. Possibly we may 
find such a hint in this Epistle to the Hebrews. 
Luke was the companion of Paul, and it is gener- 
ally conceded that, if Paul did not write this 
anonymous letter to the Hebrews, he, who did,wrote 
at Paul's dictation or with his cooperation and under 
his immediate guidance. If this be true, how likely 
it would be that Luke should have communicated 
to Paul, his companion, the substance of this con- 
versation ; and so m the Epistle to the Hebrews the 
substance of that discourse is reproduced. This 
seems the more likely, as this is the only letter in 
the New Testament which shows, on a large scale^ 
how the Old Testament Scriptures contain indirect 
as well as direct predictions of the Lord Jesua 
Christ. 

For instance, the contents of the first ten 
chapters present before us six or seven ways in 
which the Old Testament foreshadows Christ: (i) 
Typical characters and o^ces; (2) typical struct- 
ure and furniture in the tabernacle; (3) typical 

rites and ceremonies; (4) typical events and 

126 



Indirect Forecasts 

scenes; (5) typical fasts and feasts; (6) typical 
sayings and doings; (7) typical precepts and pro- 
hibitions. All these are drawn from the Old 
Testament, and used by the writer of this Epistle 
to prove that, even where no direct prediction is 
found, indirect forecasts referring to Christ may be 
distinctly traced. In these ten chapters it is 
curious that seven words are used, indicating the 
typical character of Old Testament teaching. For 
instance, the word ''order:'" "After the order (or 
rank) of Melchisedec;" ''Likeness'' or "similitude,'* 
used of the same party; "shadow;'" "example'" 
' 'parable •"" type ; " " anti-type ; ' '* these words or their 
equivalents occur in the chcpters referred to; we 
give the English equivalents of the original terms ; 
for instance, the word "parable" does not occur in 
the English version, but in the ninth chapter, 
eighth verse, in the Greek Not only have we 
these seven words, to indicate that we may find 
typical teaching in the Old Testament, but it is 
distinctly said in the ninth chapter, eighth verse, — 
("The Holy Ghost this signifying") — that the Holy 
Spirit, in these types of the Old Testament, 
signified or forecast Messianic truth. It is cer- 
tainly noteworthy that the intimation is twice 
given by Luke, that Christ un-"olded the things 

* vapa^oXr], (airo^eLyixa, (TKta, ra^is, 000:0x775, tvttos ajriTUTTOs. 

127 



God's Living Oracles 

concerning Himself in the law of Moses, the Psalms, 
and the Prophets; and then, in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, it would seem as though the very sub- 
stance of that discourse is unfolded by divine 
illumination to the mind of the writer, so that we 
can trace in a large part of the Old Testament, 
these typical characters and offices, events and 
sayings, rites and ceremonies. 

What pertains specially to the atoning work of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, constitutes, in itself, a body 
of testimony deserving special notice; but at 
present we notice some of the forecasts, found in 
these ancient types and parables, or, as they are 
called in one place, allegories — * that is, without 
denying their historical value as facts, hinting that, 
beneath the historical facts, lies another and 
deeper meaning, to be unfolded. 

For instance, the epistle refers to certain typical 
characters and offices. In the first few chapters 
we have four such typical personages: (i) Adam, 
(2) Moses, (3) Aaron, (4) Melchisedec. Adam 
forecasts Christ as the Second Man, the Last Adam. 
Adam was created a prophet, by immediate intui- 
tion to know the will of God; a priest, having the 
right to stand before God in specially intimate 
relationship; and a king, having the sceptre of 

* Galatians v; 24 aWi]\opovfj£va. 
128 



Indirect Forecasts 

dominion over the visible creation; so that he 
embodied in himself these three parallel functions. 
When he fell, he ceased to be a prophet, and needed 
a teacher; he ceased to be a priest, and needed a 
mediator; he ceased to be a king, and needed a 
sovereign to reign over him and regain for him his 
lost sceptre. All this the Seed of the woman was 
to accomplish. He was to be God's Prophet to 
men, to teach God's will; the High Priest, to rep- 
resent man before God; and the King, to rule man 
and eventually bring all things in subjection under 
His feet. This three-fold character of Christ as 
the Last Adam is further anticipated and forecast 
in the three great characters of the Old Testament 
that follow — Moses, Aaron and Melchisedec. 

In the third chapter we read: "Consider the 
Apostle and High Priest of our profession ;" Apostle 
— Moses; High Priest — Aaron. An apostle is one 
sent from God to man, an authorized prophet and 
teacher; a High Priest is one sent forth from man 
to God, an appointed representative. Christ as 
God's apostle comes forth from God to represent 
Him to man, and as High Priest goes back to God 
to represent man to God; and so in Moses, the 
apostle and prophet, and in Aaron, the priest we 
have two typical characters, representing two 

aspects of that three-fold character foreshadowed 

129 



God's Living Oracles 

in Adam, and to be fulfilled in the Seed of the 
woman. 

In Melchisedec, a priest-king, this three-fold 
profile is completely filled out. Moses and Aaron 
together (brothers jointly sharing the administra- 
tion) represent Him as the Prophet-Priest; then 
Melchisedec is presented as the Priest-King, and 
together the three foreshadow all three great offices 
of Jesus Christ, and hint, by their combination, 
that those offices are to be combined in Him. 

Typical structure and furniture are shown in 
the tabernacle, the description of which, with its 
contents and ritual, occupies more rooni in the 
Bible than any other single object or subject in 
the Old or New Testaments, and there must be a 
reason for it. Every detail of the tabernacle is 
described, and seven times in all is reference made 
to the pattern shown in the Mount,* to emphasize 
the fact that in no respect, however minute, was 
that pattern to be disregarded. What was 
that pattern? The simple diagram opposite may 
assist to fix on the mind, through the eye, the 
structure of the Tabernacle. At the rear was 
the Holiest of all, a perfect cube, ten cubits 
long, deep and high; in front of it, separated by a 

Exod. XXV : 9, 40, xxvi : 30, xxviii : 8. Numbers viii : 4. Acts vil : 44. 
Heb. vin:5. Como. I. Chron. xxviii: 11, 12, 18, 19. 

130 



DfAGRAM of the TABERNACLE 
AND ITS FURNITURE 



HOLY OF HOUES 




ARK 



SECOND VEIL 



GOLDEN 



ALTAR OF INCENSE 



HOLY PLACE 



GOLDEN 




TABLE 



CANOLTSnCft SHEW BREAD 



FIRST VEIL 




ILAVER 



OUTER COURT 



BRAZEN 
ALTAR 



%. 

s* 



Indirect Forecasts 

veil, the Holy Place, twenty cubits long and ten 
cubits broad; and, outside another veil, the 
court. 

As to the furniture of the tabernacle: first, 
outside the first veil and directly in front, as one 
approached, was the brazen altar of sacrifice, and 
back of it, the laver. Then, inside of the first veil, 
the table of shew bread on the right; and on the 
left, the golden candlestick; then, nearer to the 
second veil, the golden altar of incense. Beyond 
this second veil was the Ark, with the mysterious 
cover — the Mercy Seat, with the Cherubim facing 
each other, and bowing over it; and, in between 
them, burned the sacred Shekinah fire. 

Here, then, are seven objects that fixed the gaze: 

(i.) The Brazen Altar of Sacrifice that stood 
for atonement by blood. 

(2.) The Laver that stood for Regeneration 
through the Word and through the Spirit, as is 
plainly taught in the New Testament. 

(3.) The Table of Shew Bread, with its oblations 
and libations,* representing food and drink for the 
sustentation of life. 

(4.) The Golden Candlestick, with its seven 
branches, type of Christ as the light of the world. 

* The latter are often overlooked ; there seems no question that the 
cups or bowls on that table represented liquid food, as the " Loaves of 
Presence " represented solid food. 



God's Living Oracles 

(5.) The Altar of Incense which stands for 
prayer and supplication. 

(6.) The Mercy Seat, that stands for Interces- 
sion, Reconciliation and Identification with God. 

(7.) And then the Shekinah Fire, that symbol 
of the Life of God, and specifically, the Holy Spirit. 

That succession of objects, seen by the High 
Priest as he went into God's presence, represents 
the entire work of the Lord Jesus Christ from the 
beginning to the end of His sacrificial and glorious 
mediation on behalf of man. In the Gospel 
according to John, the order of truth as there 
unfolded with regard to the person and work of 
Jesus Christ, is exactly correspondent with the order 
of these objects in the Tabernacle, and in not one 
particular is that order violated. In the first 
chapter — "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world" — reminds us of the 
sacrifices on the Brazen Altar ; in the third chapter : 
"Except a man be bom of water and of the Spirit, 
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God," suggests 
the Laver of Regeneration ; in the fourth and sixth 
chapters. He is represented as the Drink that 
satisfies all thirst, and as "the Bread of Life; he 
that cometh unto Me shall never hunger. " Thus, 
in these chapters, the Table of Shew Bread, with 
its oblations and libations, is suggested. 

132 



Indirect Forecasts 

In the eighth and ninth chapters Christ twice 
distinctly declares "I am the light of the worid." 
Here we are reminded of the golden candlestick, 
and that suggestion of light runs through; for 
example, the blind man in the ninth chapter re- 
lieved from his blindness from birth, and made 
to see, is the symbol of the sinner, when the light 
of the world shines on his darkness and drives it 
away. 

Then, in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth 
chapters, we have that seven-fold lesson on ** asking 
in Jesus' name," never before taught — ^which 
corresponds to the golden altar of incense; and, in 
the seventeenth chapter, the great glimpse of His 
own intercession, and the first and only instance of 
that general work of intercession,* forecast in the 
fourteenth chapter, sixteenth verse, "I will pray 
the Father, and He shall give you another Com- 
forter." 

Exactly the order of the sacred furniture of the 
tabernacle reappears apparently in the truth un- 
folded here, so that the Apostle John's Gospel 
narrative becomes, as it were, a new tabernacle of 
testimony, where we begin at the outer court, go 
into the holy place, pass the veil into the Holy of 

* Compare Luke xxii: 32. This was not general but individual. "I 
have prayed for thee." 

^33 



God's Living Oracles 

Holies, and hear His intercession as He stands 
before the throne, although not Himself yet per- 
manently withdrawn within that veil. 

This veil itself is typical, as we are taught in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. It represents "His flesh," 
which flesh was rent, in order that the salvation of 
the world might be accomplished, and the believer 
himself draw near to the Mercy Seat. Here, in 
this Intercessory Prayer, we have a glimpse of 
Christ's perpetual mediation beyond the veil. 
Then, when, having passed through the experience 
of death. He comes forth from the grave in resur- 
rection power. He ascends on high to send the Holy 
Spirit to teach the Church the two great and glo- 
rious privileges, of which He has thus given the 
forecast : Access in Him to the Mercy Seat ; identi- 
fication between God and man in Christ: — "My 
Father, and your Father; My God, and your God." 
And then the impartation of the Shekinah Fire and 
Light to us: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." 

Let this startling correspondence not be too 
hastily passed by. 

The tabernacle, constructed in the time of 
Moses, all the details of which and its furniture are 
described with minuteness, was not in one par- 
ticular, to be deviated from in the slightest respect. 
Connected with this structure were the Brazen 

134 



Indirect Forecasts 

Altar, Laver, Table of Shew Bread, Golden Candle- 
stick, Altar of Incense, Ark and Mercy Seat with 
Shekinah Fire, — and, when John writes the last 
of the gospel narratives — particularly setting forth 
the Deity of the Son of God, and the fact that by 
believing in His name we have eternal life — ^he 
begins at the Brazen Altar: "Behold the Lamb of 
God;" he passes to the Laver: "Except a man be 
bom of water and of the Spirit ;" he takes us to the 
Shew Bread Table: "I am the Bread of Life;" he 
points us to the Golden Candlestick: "I am the 
Light of the World;" he leads us to the Altar of 
Incense : "Ask in My name;" and he then gives us a 
glimpse of things beyond the veil: "My Father, and 
your Father, My God, and your God;" "And He 
breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy 
Ghost." Then, by the Holy Spirit's Descent and 
Indwelling, the believer becomes himself the holiest 
of all, as taught in the two Epistles to the Corin- 
thians, where the particular word translated "tem- 
ple" in the original, means not generally the temple 
with all its courts, but specifically its inmost 
shrine.* 

Is all this an accident, or is it divine design? and 
when Jesus Christ, on the way to Emmaus, un- 
folded in all the Scriptures the great things, there 

* Compare lepov and vaos. 



God's Living Oracles 

taught concerning Himself, did He not give then 
the substance of what is recorded in these chapters 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews with regard to the 
structure of the tabernacle and its sacred furniture, 
the priesthood and its offices, as all pointing 
forward to Him, the Lamb of God, the Light of the 
World, the Bread of Life, the Great Intercessor, 
the Mercy Seat, the Giver of the Holy Ghost? 

This is but one illustration of the Messianic 
typology of the Old Testament, but it opens a door 
to unlimited discovery of truth in the whole re- 
corded history of the Hebrew people. In closing 
this chapter, a few grand conclusions from this 
whole argument may be indicated. 

First, the Bible is the mirror of the blessed Lord 
Jesus Christ, or, rather, a series or group of mirrors, 
in the midst of which He stands, so that some sepa- 
rate aspect of His glorious personality is reflected 
in each of them in turn. Here is the mirror of 
direct prediction; there is the mirror of symbol, 
rite and ceremony; again, the mirror of individual 
characters and holy offices ; the mirror of Levitica 
precepts and prohibitions; and, again, of sayings 
and doings which have an allegorical meaning. 
So all around the great gallery of the Scriptures, 
these manifold mirrors reflect one consummate and 



136 



Indirect Forecasts 

transcendent personality, — the Son of Man and the 
Son of God. 

Not only so, but the whole Bible is again seen to 
be a prophetic book: there is no point where the 
line can be drawn so that we can say, "Here pre- 
diction begins, and there it ends." Rightly 
understood, the Bible throughout contains the 
prophecies and revelations of Jesus. 

How different the bird's wings, and the wings 
which a man makes with which to fly. There 
have been almost countless experiments in the 
way of attempts to construct pinions out of material 
so light and flexible and yet so strong, and attached 
to the body by thongs and bands so tenacious, that 
man might hope to imitate a bird's flight; but all 
these efforts have ended in broken bones if not 
broken necks. What is the difficulty? Why 
cannot a man construct wings to fly with, such as 
a bird has that enable him to fly and even to rest 
on the wing? Where the man's wings begin, his 
life ends, so that his wings are a burden to be borne, 
not pinions to bear him ; but where the bird's wings 
begin, the bird's life does not end — it penetrates 
the wings to the utmost tip ; those hollow bones are 
pervaded as it were with the breath of the bird, 
the muscles with his blood and energy, and so the 
bird's life reaches to the ends, the feather-tips of 

137 



God's Living Oracles 

the wings, and they are not burdens but pinions. 
The man's wings are substitutes, the bird's are 
attributes. So there is no place in the Bible 
where one can say: "Here the prophetic element 
begins and there it ends." These predictions are 
not like a man's wing, but like a bird's wing; the 
whole Bible is penetrated and permeated by the 
Spirit of Life, which is the Spirit of Prophecy. 

Then again, the Messianic predictions in the Old 
Testament, occult as well as obvious, latent as well 
as patent, are the key to the understanding of the 
Old Testament. When Christ gave that discourse 
on the way to Emmaus, and when the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews wrote out what seems to 
be the substance of that discourse, we obtain a clue 
to the facts of Old Testament history as a whole. 
If we knew our Bibles as we shall know them some 
day, we might find that there is not a narrative, 
however remote it may seem to be from the person 
of Jesus Christ, that has not some reference to Him 
or His work, constructive and destructive — either 
to His personality or the personality of the Devil; 
or to the methods by which He advances righteous- 
ness, or by which the subtle enemy of God and 
man promotes unrighteousness. The more the 
reader is enlightened with a true insight into the 
Bible, the more he can begin anywhere, opening at 

138 



Indirect Forecasts 

random, and preach Jesus, as Philip did to the 
eunuch. 

Dr. A. J. Gordon, of Boston, on one occasion 
gave to his Httle children in the nursery a dis- 
sected map, somewhat elaborate, and said: "Do 
not try to put it together in any way excepting 
the right way, for if you do you will break it." 
He came back in a few moments, and the map was 
all put together rightly with its scores of different 
pieces. "Why," he said, as Isaac said to Jacob, 
"How hast thou found it so quickly, my son?" 
His boy said: "Father, there is a man on the 
back." Sure enough, there was a figure of a man 
pasted on the back for some advertising purpose, 
and the children had discovered here a head or foot, 
and there an eye or ear, and so put the map 
together. There is a man on the back of the 
Holy Scriptures, and if all the books of the Old 
and New Testaments are arranged around the 
central Person of our Lord, He is found to be the 
key to the structure of the whole Bible. It is 
made by this all pervading Presence one Book, one 
Revelation ; He is the one open door into its inner- 
most mysteries. 

This is God's way in part of authenticating His 
own Scriptures. Books from one particular press, 
made of paper from a particular factory, often 

139 



God's Living Oracles 

show a waterline in the paper which runs through 
all the leaves and may be seen back of the print, 
indicating that all came from the same paper mill. 
When these inspired pages are held up and seen in 
the light of God, His waterline is found on e very- 
page, the outline image of his dearly beloved Son, 
pervading and explaining the Holy Scriptures. 
The believer who, in a reverent spirit, studies the 
Book of God, discovers this image of Jesus Christ 
stamped on the whole book from beginning to end, 
woven into its texture. 

There is a singular interrelation between all the 
parts of this book. The student finds himself 
following the perimeter of a golden ring. Start- 
ing, as it were, at the top of the circle, with Adam 
in Eden, we trace his fall, and the downward 
course of history to the time of the flood; then 
still down through the awful apostasy of the race 
till the lowest point is reached in that most damna- 
ble deed — the crucifixion of the Son of God as a 
malefactor. But in His Resurrection, we begin 
the ascent on the other half of the circle. Then 
as we go up we meet the Holy Spirit's outpouring 
at Pentecost; and so on to the modern period of 
missions, with the prosecution of a world's evange- 
lisation; and, when the last chapter of Revelation 

is reached, we are back where we were in the first 

140 



Indirect Forecasts 

chapters of Genesis: "The tree of life in the 
midst of the garden;" "The water of life, clear as 
crystal;" "The tabernacle of God is with men" — 
only that, in the original Eden, there came the 
curse of sin, but, in the new City, "There shall be 
no more curse." Jesus Christ is the center of 
this great circle, and to Him as a center, every 
point in the perimeter of this golden ring is related. 
Christ, who is the key to the plan of the Bible, 
also unlocks God's plan of the ages. In Him is 
the secret which explains the Book and all history 
from creation to the new creation and the ulti- 
mate redemption. If the Bible be studied 
with reference to this redemption plan, it re- 
cords first, the creation of man and his fall; 
then the selection of a people out of whom Christ 
is to come, and who are to be the custodians of 
the inspired prophecies concerning Him; then 
these holy Oracles, gradually compiled through the 
ages, constituting the sacred Book of God, to be 
the guide to His chosen people, and full of Christ 
from Genesis to Malachi; then comes the record 
of the period of Christ himself, when the New Man 
appears on the historic scene, corresponding to 
Adam at the time of His creation. Then comes 
the separation from the world of another people, 

called the "ecclesia" or called out ones, that 

141 



God's Living Oracles 

church to be the new representative in the world 
of God in Christ, and the custodian of the doctrine 
of Redemption; then the second part of the book 
is completed, adding the New Testament to the 
Old ; and finally the glimpse of the kingdom at the 
end of the dispensation, which is itself the begin- 
ning of another epoch and a new creation. This 
whole redemptive scheme is forecast in the Bible, 
which God and His Church are working out in 
history. 

Such devout study becomes to those who will 
undertake it, another Emmaus walk. When 
with prayerfulness and reverence the Holy Scrip- 
tures are examined, we find, as step by step we 
pass on in our search. Another Who is speaking to 
us, unfolding and expounding in all the Scriptures 
the things concerning Himself; and to all such 
students there comes a time of special blessed, 
divine revelation, when through the scriptures He 
makes known Himself, as He made Himself known 
to those disciples in the breaking of bread. Prob- 
ably when He lifted those pierced hands to offer a 
few words of blessing on the food, they saw the 
prints of the nails. He still continues to take 
devout disciples into the secret place with Himself, 
draw aside His disguise and show the marks of the 

Crucified. Then His humanity no more hides His 

142 



Indirect Forecasts 

divinity ; even the Crown of Thorns blossoms into a 
wreath of celestial roses, and appears as the dia- 
dem of God upon His brow. 

When the late George H. Stuart, Esq., of Phila- 
delphia, had occasion, during the American Civil 
War, to pass through the lines on an errand of 
mercy, at night time, a sentinel challenged him: 
"Give the pass-word." * 'Washington." 'That is 
not the pass-word." "Very well," he said, "I will 
go back and rectify the mistake." He had been 
given the pass-word of the day before. So he re- 
turned presently, knowing the pass-word of the 
day. "Who is there?" "A friend." "The pass- 
word?" "Advance." "All right, Mr. Stuart," came 
the response of the sentinel. Coming near he said to 
the sentinel, "I have given you the pass-word. Do 
you know God's pass-word to heaven?" "For 
many years I have known it, Mr. Stuart; it is the 
name of Jesus." And blessed be God, that pass- 
word is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 



M3 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Bible and Forecasts of Atonement 

Russia is a great empire. The heart of Russia 
is Moscow; the heart of Moscow is the Kremlin; 
and the heart of the Kremlin is the Treasury, 
where vacant thrones and crowns, set upon pedes- 
tals, represent the conquered provinces of Russia. 

The heart of the Bible is Messianic Prophecy; 
the heart of Messianic Prophecy is the Person of 
Jesus Christ, and the heart of the Revelation of His 
Person is Redemption by blood. Hence the im- 
portance of carefully tracing the testimony of the 
Word of God concerning His atoning work. 

Among the important words, already referred to, 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, are three — "body," 
"shadow," and "outline" or "image." "Body" 
represents the substantial reality or verity of 
which the "outline" or "image" is a delineation, 
just as a profile or drawing without colour repre- 
sents a human being. "Shadow" is an outline cast 
on the ground or elsewhere by the light shining 
upon the body itself. We read of the "example 

and shadow of heavenly things;" of a "shadow of 

144 



Forecasts of Atonement 

things to come, but the body is Christ;" of the 
"image of those things;" etc.* 

The "body" was yet in the distant future, 
veiled from human sight. In the Old Testament 
is the profile drawing in outline, without colour, 
and yet so complete that, when compared with the 
actual portrait, hung on the walls of the New Testa- 
ment, filled in with colour, the profile or outline, 
however ancient, and the fuller image, however 
recent, are identical — one being but the filling out 
of the other. 

The conception of a "shadow" is suggestive. If 
any erect object stands where the setting sun 
shines on it a shadow is produced, at times so 
lengthened as to reach far toward the opposite 
horizon. A great Personality fills the New 
Testament — Jesus Christ the Crucified One — but 
the lengthened shadow of the crucified Christ 
extends backward and touches the remotest horizon 
of history. Thus one long "shadow of things to 
come," cast backward by the sunlight of God, 
covers the Old Testament records and periods, 
and to look at these correspondent facts compels 
the double conviction of the divine origin of the 
Scriptures and the divine character of Jesus Christ. 

"Atonement" is not a scriptural word, as com- 

* Hebrews viii.'s; x:i. 
145 



God's Living Oracles 

monly used. The Shakespearean sentence, "He 
seeks to make at-one-ment between the Duke of 
Gloucester and his brother, ' ' is often quoted as giving 
a definition of "atonement," but it is misleading. 
The original word, used in the New Testament, 
means "reconciliation;"* and in the Old Testament 
it is, as near as may be, the equivalent of that 
which covers — "propitiation." Perhaps the phrase 
most nearly expressing the sense of the word atone- 
ment, as used by orthodox believers, is redemp- 
tion by blood ; and it is to be hoped that the time 
is far distant when this will be abandoned in conces- 
sion to the modem demand that the "blood" be 
eliminated from Christianity. 

It is at the peril of our faith that we put on the 
blood the stigma of reproach. From the first 
pages of the Bible to the last, blood colours, with 
its crimson, the entire inspired record. Redemp- 
tion by blood is the central factor in atonement, 
as set forth both in the New Testament and in the 
Old, the connection between which was long since 
sagaciously expressed by Augustine, that "the Old 
Testament is patent in the New, and the New is 
latent in the Old;" that the truths doctrinally and 
historically set forth in the New Testament, are 
found pictorially, typically and symbolically, in the 

♦Romans v:ii* KardWoyrj. 
146 



Forecasts of Atonement 

Old Testament; that while the New unfolds the 
Old, at the same time the Old enfolds the New. 

One example of this may suffice. Of all the 
epistles of the New Testament, the Epistle to the 
Romans is conceded to be the fullest and clearest 
in setting forth the essentials of the doctrine of 
redemption. The others which follow presup- 
pose this epistle, though it was not the first 
written ; and the providence of God so guided even 
the compilation of the canon of the New Testa- 
ment as that the epistles should there be found in 
the order, not of composition, but of truth as it 
needed to be progressively taught. 

In the Epistle to the Romans, the first eight 
chapters set forth several leading and distinct 
truths with regard to redemption. 

That which is foremost, as lying at the bottom of 
the whole scheme of salvation, is that Redemption 
begins in deliverance from the wrath of God — His 
holy retributive judgment upon sin. (i:i8-ii:i6.) 
We are further taught : 

(2.) That Redemption provides for the expiation 
of the guilt which invokes and challenges the 
wrath, (ill :9-24) 

(3.) That Redemption puts away the sin, removes 
it from between the sinner and God as something 
that is cancelled and obliterated. (iii:25-iv:8) 

147 



God's Living Oracles 

(4.) That Redemption cancels a debt to the law, 
justice and government of God, and makes it as 
though it had never existed, so that we have 
pacific relations with a holy God. (iv:8-25.) 

(5 .) That Redemption involves a reconciliation or 
a restoration between the alienated sinner and God, 
so that he becomes a member of the divine 
family. (v:i-2i.) 

(6.) That there is emancipation from the power of 
sin, as there has been deliverance from its penalty. 
"The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 
made me free from the law of sin and death." 
(vii:i-viii:2). 

(7.) The grand climax of the eighth chapter 
reveals the supreme truth of Redemption, that 
all this depends upon a personal relation with the 
Redeemer — the Lord Jesus Christ. Redemption 
does not come through a truth taught, nor even 
through blood shed, apart from vital union with 
the Person of the Redeemer. He is Himself the 
Way, the Truth and the Life. Not by any teach- 
ing, nor even by any sacrifice, alone, but by identi- 
fication with Him, are we saved, (viii •.2^-^^). 

It is with the surprise and delight of a new dis- 
covery that the student of scripture finds all these 
same truths set forth, illustratively and pictorially, 

in the first three books of the Old Testament, and 

148 



Forecasts of Atonement 

in about the same order as that in which they are 
unfolded in the Epistle to the Romans. They are 
found in the Old Testament, not explicitly, but 
presented as object lessons, or in pictorial repre- 
sentations, in three great feasts or festivals appoint- 
ed for the Jews. The whole ritual of Judaism is 
important as a typical forecast of New Testament 
doctrinal teaching and fully interpreted only 
thereby ; but, for the sake of brevity, we take simply 
three of these feasts or festivals, all of them con- 
nected with the tenth day of the seventh month: 
the festival of the Passover; the festival of the 
great Day of Atonement, or Propitiation, and the 
festival, occurring once in fifty years, known as 
the Jubilee, which began on the evening of the 
great Day of Atonement, a fact which itself is 
typical, for only when the Atonement was com- 
pleted could the Jubilee year begin. 

In the Passover, the main conception is, ob- 
viously, "Deliverance from judgment, or wrath — " 
the leading thought of the Epistle to the Romans: 
"The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against 
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who 
hold the truth in unrighteousness." That is 
where, as Paul shows, redemption must begin, 
and in the Feast of the Passover, which began 

the sacred circle of festivals, such deliverance 

149 



God's Living Oracles 

from wrath is plainly emphasized as the first ne- 
cessity. When Jehovah and the Destroying Angel 
passed over every Jewish house, it was because of 
the blood, sprinkled on the side posts and the 
upper doorposts, — those who passed out and in 
being thus surrounded by the blood — and God 
said, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you, 
and will not suffer the Destroyer to smite you." 
The one thought is deliverance from judgment. 

The second of these festivals was the great Day 
of Atonement or Propitiation. Commentators 
have found here a battleground over the question 
what is meant by the goat, "Azazel.'' The sim- 
plest sense is ordinarily the safest for, when a 
dozen theories of biblical interpretation are sug- 
gested, that which is most literal, lies most on the 
surface, is most conformed to common sense and 
which needs the least philosophy to master it, is 
usually the true one. God did not make His book 
for scholars or sages, but for common folks. 

The ceremonies on the Day of Atonement were, 
as near as possible, twin ceremonies; two kids of 
goats of the same age and size, being chosen, and, as 
Jewish writers say, the goat, Azazel, distinguished 
from the other only by a scarlet ribbon or piece 
of cloth tied to it. One of the two was slain, and 
the blood poured out; on the other the hands of 

150 



Forecasts of Atonement 

the High Priest Aaron were heavily laid, as though 
to transfer to him a heavy load of guilt, while the 
High Priest confessed over his head, in words still 
recorded by Jewish writers, his own sins and the 
sins of the people. Then that goat was led away 
by the hand of some fit man into a "lone place," 
out of sight of the people, whence he would not 
find his way back to the camp. Azazel means 
"removal," "putting away at a distance," and 
here is a twin conception: First, of guilt expiated, 
— and, again, of sin borne away — removed from 
before the face of God.* 

"Removal" is more than expiation. Expiation 
covers guilt; removal has to do with fellowship; 
when sin is expiated, as to its guilt, it is practically 
blotted out as to its record and remembrance; it 
is put behind God's back; "cast into the depths 
of the sea;" borne away into the lone place, never 
to find its way back and bring guilt to remem- 
brance. Disciples often dredge up from the 
depths of this merciful oblivion the sins that God 
has buried there, out of sight, not content to let 
forgiven sin lie, as it ought to lie, in the hidden 
forgetfulness of His love and grace. And again, 
those whom He forgives too often say: "I can 
forgive, but I cannot forget." What if God for- 

* "The Lord also hath put away thy sin" — II Samuel xii : 13. 

151 



God's Living Oracles 

gave and did not forget? Then, when a praying 
believer draws near to the throne of grace, even 
forgiven sin would keep coming up before God and 
before the suppliant to taint communion and 
hinder mutual approach. It is perilous to pray, 
"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," 
while such is the fashion of our forgiveness. If 
that Lord's prayer teaches anything, it is that we 
are to adopt, in dealing with men, the principle 
that we would have God adopt in dealing with us, 
which He enjoins on us as our law of dealing with 
others. 

These twin ceremonies therefore set forth this 
double conception : That the guilt of sin is expiated 
in the blood of the slain Lamb but, as the dead 
victim cannot at the same time represent a living 
presence and a living power, sins are also borne 
away representatively by the goat, Azazel. We 
have thus the dying Christ and the living Christ 
both typified. He Who bore our sins up to the 
cross to atone for their guilt, also bore them out of 
sight, to sink them into the depths of the sea of 
oblivion, so that even the remembrance of them 
is no more before God. He therefore says: 
"Their sins and their iniqmties will I remember no 
more.'' 

That is a significant phrase with similar mean- 

152 



Forecasts of Atonement 

ing — ''Blotted out." When the Jewish scribes 
wrote on wax tablets with the "stylus" (from 
which our English word "style"), to obliterate the 
record, it was needful only to turn the stylus 
round, and with the flat end press back the wax 
into the cavities, and it was as though there never 
had been a record. Sin forgiven and forsaken is 
with God as though it had never been ; He puts it 
away. Hence that strong language used by Paul : 
"Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that 
was against us and contrary to us, and took it out of 
the way, nailingit to His cross." (Colossians ii : 14.) 
There are two ways of dealing with a debt : to pay 
it, and to destroy the record of it. The Lord 
Jesus Christ nailed sin to the cross — that cancelled 
it as a debt ; and he blotted it out — that annihilated 
it as a record. 

In the third Festival, three things took place 
when the trump of Jubilee sounded: 

(i.) All debts were cancelled.* 

(2.) All alien estates were restored to their owners. 

(3.) Every one involved in servitude, for any 
cause, was emancipated. 

These correspond to the other truths taught in 

* It is said that a document, showing debt, was in two parts, and that 
the creditor brought his portion and nailed it to the doorpost of the debt- 
or's house, and that the debtor brought out his portion and nailed that 
also beside it to show that the two belonged together, and the debt 
was cancelled. Compare "Indenture." 

153 



God's Living Oracles 

the Epistle to the Romans: cancellation of the 
debt to the law and justice; restoration to God's 
favour; emancipation from the power as well as 
penalty of sin. 

In the 25th chapter of Leviticus we have a de- 
scription of the ceremonies and laws of the Jubilee 
year, and there is a special provision as to the 
"kinsman," from the 25th to the 30th verses. It 
is what is known as the "law of the kinsman" (Heb. 
goel). There are two conditions: first, that the 
man who undertakes redemption, shall be a kins- 
man — that is, have kin with the family needing 
redemption; secondly, he must belong to some 
other branch of the family, otherwise he would 
be involved in its calamities, and be unable to act 
in the capacity of a redeemer. 

These provisions are historically illustrated in 
the book of Ruth. Naomi had lost her husband 
and her two sons in the forbidden land of Moab, 
and her estate in the Land of Promise appears to 
have been in a condition of bankruptcy. We read 
in Ruth, second chapter, first verse, that "Naomi 
had a kinsman of her husband, a mighty man of 
wealth of the family of Elimelech, and his name 
was Boaz." The name Boaz means, "in him is 
ability." Boaz, being a kinsman, had the right to 
redeem, but being of a higher branch of the family, 

154 



Forecasts of Atonement 

and having wealth, he had also the power to 

redeem. Thus, what is a precept in Levitical law, 

finds an historical example in the interposition of 

Boaz in behalf of Ruth, who was the widow 

of Mahlon. This narrative, which superficial 

readers think is only a love story, is susceptible of 

a deeper interpretation. It is the one and only 

book of the Old Testament that plainly suggests 

the necessity that our Redeemer should have a 

double nature, as the God-Man, in order to fulfil 

the conditions upon which only, man's redemption 

can be accomplished. Thirty times in that short 

book the word "kinsman" is found, or "redeemer," 

"near kinsman," "next of kin," "kindred" — like 

words, all having reference to like things. Ruth 

was a stranger, a Moabitess, who came into the 

Land of Promise as the widow of an Israelite who 

had gone into the forbidden land of Moab, and 

died there. She came as a servant rather than a 

mistress; a bankrupt through debt on her estate; 

an alien, not belonging properly to the tribes of 

Israel. Boaz takes compassion upon her, cancels 

the debt, brings her out of an alienated condition 

into the true ancestral line of the Messiah, and not 

only restores to her Mahlon 's lost estate, but 

emancipates her from a servile condition, and 

makes her his own wife. That which constituted 

15s 



God's Living Oracles 

any man a redeemer in Israel, and gave the right 
to redeem, as laid down in the Levitical code, is 
thus historically illustrated in this narrative. 

How plainly this book is intended to teach the 
doctrine concerning Redemption, will be seen by 
examining chapter four, verses 4-10. Here the 
word "redemption" occurs five times in a single 
verse, nine times in three verses, and in the tenth 
verse, Boaz declares that in redeeming the property 
he also purchases the widow of Mahlon to be his 
own wife. Nothing can explain the extreme 
minuteness of detail here except a typical design 
on the part of the inspiring Spirit ; and, when we 
turn to the New Testament, the typical meaning is 
made entirely clear. We find there is presented, 
as in the first two chapters of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, the double nature of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, which will receive further consideration in a 
subsequent chapter. We may now anticipate far 
enough to say that our Lord Jesus Christ had to 
become one with man in order to have the right to 
redeem. He is, therefore, our fellowman; but if 
He had been involved in man's fall, and identified 
with man's sin, He could not have acted as Re- 
deemer. No sinner can redeem himself, much 
less can he redeem his brother.* He is, therefore, 

* None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God 
a ransom for him. — Psa. xlix: 7. 



Forecasts of Atonement 

as the God-man, our Boaz: by that kinship and 
strength or abiHty, He is "able to save to the 
uttermost all that come unto God by Him." 

The correspondence between this truth as doc- 
trinally set forth in the New Testament, and 
pictorially, typically, and historically in the Old, 
is so close, that we cannot avoid the conviction of a 
divine design. Here is a new example of the facto 
that, while the "body" of truth is found in the New 
Testament, the lengthened "shadow" and "ex- 
ample" of it are found in the Old. Here is an exact 
outline in the book of Ruth of what is afterward 
filled in, in the Person and work of the God-man, 
our Redeemer. Thus, all the leading truths, and 
essentially in the order of the Epistle to theRomans, 
are forecast in the three great Festivals of the Jews. 

The Passover: Deliverance from wrath by the 
shedding of blood. 

The Day of Atonement, in the expiation of guilt, 
and putting away of the remembrance of sin. 

The Year of Jubilee: Cancellation of debt and 
deliverance from bankruptcy; Restoration of an 
alien to the family rights; and emancipation from 
servitude. 

All these are inseparable from the person of the 
redeemer, whose kinship with the party to be 
redeemed gives the right to redeem, and whose 

J57 



God's Living Oracles 

exemption from such party's calamities, gives the 
power. Moreover, the redemption, as in the case 
of Ruth, involves not only the purchase of the 
inheritance, but the purchase of the original 
owner. So Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, redeems 
man by taking him into sacred union with Himself. 
Whom He saves from their lost estate. He weds 
as His chosen Bride. And so, Paul, writing of the 
"great mystery concerning Christ and the Church," 
represents what He, as Husband, does for the 
Church: "He loved the Church, and gave Him- 
self for it ; He sanctified and cleansed it ; He nour- 
ishes and cherishes it, and He presents it to Him- 
self.* 

Another typical forecast must be referred to 
before we leave this subject. Five sacrifices or 
offerings are described and enjoined in the first 
three chapters of Leviticus, and these are divisible 
into two classes; First, ill savour offerings; and, 
second, those of sweet savour: the former were 
supposed, when burnt, to go downward as some- 
thing under a curse; the others, to go upward as a 
sweet savour in the nostrils of God. What the 
philosophy of all this is, probably an Archangel 
cannot fully unfold ; this is another theme that will 
bear study for all eternity. But some truth seems 

* Ephesians v: 25-33. 
158 



Forecasts of Atonement "^-^ 

to be plainly taught. The word "burnt" is differ- 
ent in the two cases. In one it means "to turn to 
ashes," and in the other, "to ascend as in flames." 
This suggests the idea that when a life is forfeited 
by sin and an innocent victim is laid on the altar 
in place of the sinner, Justice — like a descending 
fire — consumes the offering and turns it to ashes; 
and then the ransomed life, moved by gratitude 
and adoration by what has been done on its behalf, 
is voluntarily laid before God, and, by a fire which 
is not a consuming but a refining fire, aflame with 
worship, gratitude, affection, that life is swept 
upward to God as something acceptable in Jesus 
Christ. Here are suggested, — a descending fire, 
an ascending flame — something accursed through 
sin, something approved through redemption. 

If we look beyond the first eight chapters of 
Romans, the second part contains truth com- 
plementary to the first. In the first part, the 
dominant idea is the sacrifice of the innocent for the 
guilty; in the second, the dominant note is the 
sacrifice of the ransomed soul to the service of the 
Ransomer: "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, 
by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies 
a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which 
is your reasonable (spiritual) service." 

Here is another double truth taught : a life must 

159 



God's Living Oracles 

be given for a life in order to redemption and 
salvation, — the life of the innocent for the guilty; 
but second, the life of the ransomed must be given 
to the Ransomer, in order to sanctification and 
service. These double truths, forecast in the Old 
Testament, are plainly taught in the New. 

Sublimely simple all this is, — and as a matter 
of fact, a little child can understand this great 
primary fact and truth of the Word of God, re- 
demption by blood. 

The greatest proof, perhaps, that Christianity 
is from God, is the long historic argument of experi- 
ment. Ever since the day when Abel laid his 
lamb on the altar, and saw, somehow, the coming 
Seed of the woman, as his Atoning Saviour, down to 
this very day, the one thing that has proved the 
salvation of men has been faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. No man can show, in all infidel theories, 
in all agnostic negations, in all sceptical notions, 
in all refining away of the Doctrine of Atonement, 
anything that can bring to believers what this 
doctrine has brought to them for the last two 
thousand years, and those who trust in Christ may 
well refuse to turn aside to consider the abandon- 
ment of this confidence until something better is 
oifered in its place. 

Primary truths, like these, are the heart of the 

i6o 



Forecasts of Atonement 

whole Word of God, and the rock basis of the 
history of the Church of God. The argument from 
experiment is indubitable and unanswerable. 
The world can furnish nothing else that saves, 
nothing that sanctifies, nothing that removes the 
sense of guilt and alienation from God, nothing 
that brings into communion with the unseen 
world and the unseen God, and keeps the soul, 
even in the dying hour, confident, and enables one 
to say triumphantly 

"In my hand no price I bring, 
Simply to Thy cross I cling." 

It is worth while to have something to cling to 

and rest upon in a dying hour, instead of making 

a leap in the dark. 

Many of the great men of Britain have been 

eminent also as men of God. Bishop Butler, who 

was called the Melchisedec of the "English Church," 

— because he had no predecessor and no successor — 

fell into great depression in his dying moments, 

and he said: "Chaplain, where shall I find hope? 

Where shall I find a solid resting place for my poor 

feet?" "My Lord Bishop, Jesus died for you," he 

answered. ' 'How shall I know that He died for me? 

How shall I get hold of it for myself?" And the 

Chaplain answered: "Him that cometh unto me, 

i6i 



God's Living Oracles 

I will in no wise cast out." "That is just what I 
wanted," said the dying Bishop. 

Archbishop Benson used to say that the primary 
truths are proofs of the divine character of the 
Bible, because "a little child can comprehend 
primary truths, and many people cannot get hold 
of anything beyond them; while the greatest must 
come back from all their excursions into philosophy 
and science to rest at last upon them." "Jesus 
died for me," Charles Haddon Spurgeon declared 
to be the four words he had lived by, and was going 
to die by. 

When they asked the dying Faraday: "What 
are your speculations?" he replied that he was not 
pillowing his head upon any "speculations." "I 
know whom I have believed, and am persuaded 
that He is able to keep that which I have com- 
mitted to Him, against that day." 

The late Lord Bishop of Durham, one of the 
grandest men ever in the English Church, having 
at the last a comparatively long and painless illness, 
some thought he must be meditating some new 
work of scholarship, and ventured to ask. "No,'* 
he said, "I am coming back from all my studies to 
remember that Jesus died for me. I take two or 
three great primary truths and dwell on them." 



162 



Forecasts of Atonement 

So much for the testimonies of the great. Let 
us come down now to the lowest level. 

In Southampton, some years ago, there was an 
adulterer, a blasphemer, a profane swearer, the 
terror of the whole district. He ventured into a 
tent one night, on the last day of a mission, and 
heard a sermon on "Him that cometh unto Me, I 
will in no wise cast out." He said: "If there is any 
salvation for such a wretch as I am, I want it." 
And he stayed and talked with the preacher after- 
ward, and immediately gave himself to God, and 
began a new life. He let alone his drink and 
tobacco, and all his vile habits, and was the 
admiration of the district where he had been the 
terror before. One night he was knocked down 
by a passing train and both his legs were cut off at 
the thigh. When the surgeon told him, "I am 
sorry to say it, but, my dear fellow, you have not 
more than fifteen minutes to live," he began to sing: 

"Hallelujah, 'tis done, I believe on the Son, 
I'm saved by the blood of the Crucified One." 

The Gospel that can save such a man as that, and 
make him happy in view of death, fifteen minutes 
later, is a great deal better than anything that 
agnosticism, skepticism, or infidelity can bring 
him. 

163 



God's Living Oracles 

Yes, it is the Gospel for the Httle ones of earth. 
The poor Scotch lad, half-imbecile, who wanted 
to come to the Lord's Table, but was thought by 
the minister of the kirk to have really not enough 
intelligence to discern the Lord's body, as he 
turned away, was heard, as he went out of the 
door, to say with sobs in his simple fashion : 

"Three in One, and One in Three, 
And the Middle One, He died for me." 



164 



CHAPTER IX 

The Bible and the Blood 

The Philosophy of the Atonement 

From the fact of the atonement, we turn now to 
look at some indications of God's plan in the 
atonement, or the philosophy of the plan of salva- 
tion. 

Three rules of Scripture study are of great im- 
portance and consequence: Search, Meditate, 
Compare. Search, because the truth in Holy 
Scripture lies often under the surface. "The letter 
killeth, but the spirit giveth life." That which is 
in the Scriptures for our highest education, 
instruction and consolation, is not superficially to 
be picked up or gleaned; it has to be dug for, like 
veins of gold that yield only to the pickaxe. 
Meditation is bringing the whole nature, mind and 
heart, sensibilities, conscience and will, into such a 
prayerful and receptive frame, as to open up the 
entire being to the illumination of the Spirit. 
Comparison is that of which particularly this 
chapter treats, putting scripture teachings side by 
side that each may throw light on the other. 

165 



God's Living Oracles 

While the Bible does not present truth, crystallized 
into a system, it does contain truth in substance, 
and furnish material for a system — not as stone 
in the structure, but as stone in the quarry. The 
value of thus collating, and comparing spiritual 
things with spiritual, is found in the constant dis- 
covery of unsuspected correspondences, coinci- 
dences, and mutual adaptations. The stone is 
found to be hewn and shapen, ready to be carried 
to the site of the building, and there put together 
without the need of axe, or any iron tool to adjust 
the various blocks to their decreed place; so that 
one is enabled to build up a system of truth, out of 
Biblical materials, and according to what is evi- 
dently a preconceived divine plan. 

A mythical story is told of Michael Angelo and 
"The Sleeping Cupid," that he dug up, in different 
localities, certain fragments of the sculptor's 
chisel, which, being put together, proved to be all 
parts of one original statue, broken and scattered 
in the time of revolution and war. In some such 
way, those who search the Holy Scriptures, 
meditate upon them, and compare spiritual 
things with spiritual, often reach surprising 
results. 

It becomes us to tread with unsandalled feet on 

ground so holy as the philosophy of the atone- 

i66 



Philosophy of Atonement 

ment, searching the scriptures, if haply we may 
find there any indications that God Himself has 
given of the principles that underlie atonement for 
sin. Some of the problems that confronted God 
with regard to man's redemption, we can scarcely 
understand at all because of sensibilities dulled by 
habitual contact with evil. Familiarity with sin 
involves the loss of all true conception of its enor- 
mity and deformity. Yet there can be no high 
value placed upon the work of Christ until there is 
some apprehension of the desperation and degra- 
dation of man's fallen state, and the utter corrup- 
tion of his nature. 

There are several aspects of sin which, obviously, 
must be considered and met in a redemptive plan, 
and which, in part, have already been considered: 

Sin is transgression, and transgression demands 
penalty. 

Sin is guilt, and guilt demands expiation. 

Sin is character, and character demands renewal. 

Sin is slavery, and slavery demands emancipa- 
tion. 

Sin is ruin, and ruin demands rebuilding. 

Sin is war against Almighty God, and this de- 
mands the vindication of God's honour and holi- 
ness. There must be on His part no complicity 

with sin, in a lax fashion of pardoning. 

167 



God's Living Oracles 

These are a few indications of the tremendous 
moral problems that confronted the great Lawgiver. 
Nothing short of Infinite Wisdom and Infinite 
Love were equal to forming a scheme that should 
at once save the sinner from sin, and save God 
from compromise and complicity with it. 

In the Bible at least a few intimations are given 
as to the way in which all these necessary factors 
in the problem were met. 

First, sin is transgression of the law. "Who 
His Own Self bare our sins in His Own Body on the 
tree." "Whom God hath set forth to be a pro- 
pitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His 
righteousness for the remission of sins that are 
past, through the forbearance of God." 

Again, sin is guilt, and guilt must be expiated : 
"The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us 
from all sin." 

And, again, sin is character ; it involves the nature : 
"Except a man be bom from above, he cannot see 
the kingdom of God." "If any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; 
behold all things are become new." 

Sin is slavery: "The law of the Spirit of life in 

Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of 

sin and death." "Stand fast, therefore, in the 

liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, 

i68 



Philosophy of Atonement 

and be not entangled again in the yoke of bond- 
age. 

Sin is ruin: "For this purpose the Son of God 
was manifested, that He might destroy (or undo) 
the works of the Devil." 

And, finally, sin is war against Almighty God, 
and God has no complicity with the enmity of the 
sinner against Him and His government; and we 
read, in that crowning verse in the third of Romans : 
"To declare, I say. His righteousness, that He 
might be just, and the Justifier of him that be- 
lieveth in Jesus." God declares all the great ends 
sought in redemption to be fulfilled in His plan of 
Salvation. 

Perhaps some further hints may be found as 
to the way in which those ends are fulfilled, by 
first inquiring as to the basal conceptions, lying at 
the foundation of redemption. 

First of all, there must be a legal satisfaction to 

a broken law. A death penalty was attached to 

sin, from the beginning: "The soul that sinneth, 

it shall die," crystallizes in proverbial form that 

first threat and warning: "In the day that thou 

eatest thereof, dying, thou shalt die." Here we 

touch the basis of the whole system, both of 

retribution and redemption. The broken law 

of God must be honoured and maintained; the 

169 



God's Living Oracles 

death penalty must be executed; there must be 
satisfaction to the principles of divine justice, 
law and government. Upon the upholding of 
the sanctions of the law, all government ulti- 
mately depends both for its purity and perma- 
nency. 

Secondly, such satisfaction is provided by sub- 
stitution. Some are needlessly afraid of that 
word, substitution; yet, redemption, as taught 
in the Bible, is certainly based on this principle, — 
an innocent victim takes the place of the guilty — 
a penalty is borne vicariously to vindicate law 
and justice; the offending party, through the 
substitution of a life for a life, escaping that 
eternal death which would otherwise have been 
his portion. From the first hint of this redemp- 
tive scheme, in the earlier books of the Bible, the 
careful reader may trace, from Abel's altar on, 
this principle of substitution systematically carried 
out. The first martyr came to God, bringing a lamb 
from his flock, and offering that lamb as a sacrifice 
for sin. Thus understood, Abel's offering affords 
the most satisfactory explanation of the language 
used by God to Cain, when his "countenance fell:" 
"Why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest 
well, shalt not thou be accepted? And if thou 

doest not well, behold, the sin-offering croucheth 

170 



Philosophy of Atonement 

at the door." i. e., a sin offering avails for you as 
for Abel; and you may, in the same way, "be 
accepted" by the substitution of the innocent 
victim for the guilty sinner." In the offering of 
the Paschal Lamb, and on the great Day of Atone- 
ment, the same essential and important lesson is 
explicitly taught. 

Yet further on in the Old Testament, we are 
taught that redemption is not only by satisfaction 
to a broken law, and by substitution of the inno- 
cent for the guilty, but that it is on the principle 
of representation which is a step in advance even 
of substitution.* Though these terms are not 
scriptural, they answer the purpose, as equiva- 
lents, briefly to convey or express the scriptural 
truth. 

The principle of representation is first clearly 
enunciated in Exodus xxviii: 38-43, a passage 
so significant as especially to need study. 

Aaron — undoubtedly the typical representa- 
tive of the great High Priest that has passed into 
the heavens — is bidden, when he comes into the 
holiest place of all, to wear, bound upon the fore- 
front of the mitre, the holy crown with the inscrip- 
tion, "Holiness to the Lord," indicating absolute 
surrender to God and perfect holiness, realized of 

* Isaiah Liii. 
171 



God's Living Oracles 

course only in his great anti-type, Jesus Christ 
himself. The thirty-eighth verse reads: "And it 
shall be always upon his forehead, that they (the 
people, the children of Israel) may be accepted 
before the Lord." Very significant is this change 
of pronouns. : "always upon his forehead, that they 
may be accepted." As he goes into the Holy of 
Holies, he represents the people. Christ, the 
great High Priest of whom Aaron was only the 
type, goes into the Holiest of all, "appearing in 
the very presence of God for us," and His Holiness, 
which is always before the face of God, is the 
ground of the acceptance of all believers; His 
presence before God being perpetual, that their 
acceptance with God may be equally perpet- 
ual. 

The forty-third verse of this same chapter pre- 
sents the complimentary truth, that, if they, the 
parties so represented, failed to conform to the 
regulations which God had established, they 
should "bear their own iniquity and die for it." 
Here is the dread alternative. The sinner who 
rejects the substitution, satisfaction and representa- 
tion of Jesus Christ, bears his own iniquity and 
dies for it. But he who takes refuge in Jesus 
Christ is "accepted in the beloved," and the per- 
fection of his Substitute is the perpetual pledge 

172 



Philosophy of Atonement 

of his own acceptance. Such provisions of grace 
are surpassingly wonderful! 

Still further on, a thought additional to all the 
rest, is presented — that this redemption is insep- 
arable from regeneration. The Holy Spirit of 
God supplements and complements the atoning 
work of Jesus Christ on the cross — Christ expiating 
penalty, and cleansing guilt; the Holy Spirit, 
changing the very nature, and so implanting the 
germ of a holy character. Not only an imputed 
righteousness, but an imparted righteousness, 
belongs to the scheme of redemption: first, the 
believer is, through Jesus Christ, clothed with God's 
righteousness, as a garment, displacing his own 
"righteousnesses which are as filthy rags ;" and then, 
underneath this garment of a vicarious righteous- 
ness, the Holy Ghost divinely works in the be- 
liever, both to will and to do, so that a divine 
righteousness, in a sense, becomes his own pos- 
session; and when he finally appears before the 
glory of God, and the searching eye of Omniscience 
falls upon him, and the light more piercing than all 
other that ever shone, beats upon him like the 
sun in noontide splendour, even God Himself shall 
see no spot nor wrinkle nor blemish nor anything 
rebukable or reprovable in His sight.* Such 

* Compare Colossians i : 22. Jude 24, 
173 



God's Living Oracles 

final perfection for a penitent and believing sinner 
would be incredible but for the declaration of the 
Lord Himself. 

God does not, therefore, simply pardon a sinner, 
passing over his sin and guilt because of a redemp- 
tion by blood, but He recreates the sinner into a 
saint; and so, far from setting a premium on sin 
by a lax exercise of mercy. He actually regenerates, 
renews, recreates in His own image. 

There is still another level of redemption, higher, 
if possible, than this; for the scheme of salva- 
tion which starts with satisfaction and pro- 
ceeds to substitution, then to representation, and 
then to regeneration, ends and is consummated 
in eternal identification with the Redeemer. 

Identification means being made one with 
another. Christ came down from heaven to be 
so far made one with the sinner in his sin, as to be 
entitled to take his place before the broken law ; then 
He went back to heaven to take the believing sinner 
up with Him as a saint, and seat him with Himself 
on the throne. The Bible teaches this double 
identification; God becoming man, that He may 
be identified with man, and that, in the end, man 
may be identified with Him — Christ taking human 
nature, that He may bear man's sins and expiate 
man's guilt: Christ imparting divine nature to 

174 



Philosophy of Atonement 

man that man may be forever sharer both of His 
holiness and of His happiness. Character ulti- 
mately makes condition. 

These outlines of God's redemption plan only 
touch as on the outskirts of one of the greatest 
themes of which the Word of God treats, the 
dimensions of which no human or angelic intelli- 
gence has ever yet measured or explored.* They 
suffice, however, to hint the great foundation 
principles which underlie the whole system of 
redemption. A few practical inferences may 
show the bearings of these great truths. 

In the study of this subject the question natur- 
ally arises whether the moral ends of punishment 
are met and satisfied in such vicarious atonement. 
We need to ask, therefore, another preliminary 
question as to what the moral ends of punishment 
are; and all will agree that they are somewhat as 
follows : 

(i.) Law, as a broken code, must be honoured 
and magnified by due infliction of penalty. 

(2.) Guilt, as guilt, must be exhibited in its 
enormity and deformity. 

(3.) The sanctions of government must be so 
upheld that none may sin with impunity. 

*1 Peter i: 10-12. 



God's Living Oracles 

(4.) So far as possible, forgiven offenders must be 
reclaimed and reformed. 

(5 . ) Other offenders must be deterred from similar 
offences. 

(6.) God Himself must be vindicated as an abso- 
lutely holy God. 

These points, indicated already at the outset of 
this discussion, in somewhat different terms, are 
here restated because of their bearing on the 
question now before us, whether the atonement, 
redemption by blood, based on the principles of 
satisfaction, substitution, representation, regenera- 
tion, identification — answers the moral ends aimed 
at in the punishment of sin. 

There seems to be no ground for doubt that in the 
cross of Jesus Christ such manifestation was made 
of the majesty, perfection, righteousness and 
inviolability of the law of God, that the universe of 
intelligent beings saw, and yet shall see, far more, 
the infinite perfection of that law, and its inviola- 
bility — the impossibility of transgressing it without 
the exaction of penalty. The exhibition to the 
universe of the essential corruption and guilt of sin, 
was probably greater, when on the cross God's own 
Son died for sin, than though every individual 
transgressor had suffered the full penalty in his 

own person. Punishment does not in any circum- 

176 



Philosophy of Atonement 

stances necessarily reform offenders,* but millions 
of such offenders have already been melted into 
contrition before the cross of Jesus Christ, in whom 
nothing else had ever awakened penitence. Other 
millions of believers, on earth to-day, and more 
ntmierous than ever before, owe all that they are to 
that cross. In heathen lands, where no force of law, 
however stringent , o r government , however despotic , 
where neither prison cell nor rack of torture, 
could compel men to abandon their evil doing, 
the most abandoned sinners have bowed before 
the cross of Christ, subdued and transformed, and 
this miracle is still going on. 

As to the deterring of other offenders, no one can 
say — so narrow are the limits of our knowledge in 
this life — what the cross of Christ may have to do 
with other worlds, possibly peopled by beings ex- 
posed to all the moral liabilities of sin, in restraining 
them from disobedience. 

As to the vindication of God's character from all 
complicity with sin, when He surrendered His Son 
to the cross for sinners, it was an unspeakable tes- 
timony to the fact that, with His deepest nature — 
the inmost heart of His Deity — He hated with 
eternal and unchangeable abhorrence, even the 

* They gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of 
heaven. Rev. xvi :10. 

177 



God's Living Oracles 

thought of evil. We grant that vicarious atone- 
ment would be immoral, and so impossible, were 
the substitution compulsory ; but it was voluntary, 
as well as vicarious. The Son of God was not com- 
pelled or constrained, even by the will or authority 
of the Father, unwillingly to take up and bear the 
cross. He "offered Himself unto God" — a Lamb 
without spot — as a sacrifice for men. Love's 
authority was the only constraint. He was 
driven to Calvary by no decree, but drawn by 
infinite sympathy and pity. 

The principle of substitution is not absolutely 
new. In human society it has always been an 
admitted principle; as, for instance, in war. The 
story of the Napoleonic campaigns is familiar to all, 
how in the early wars a man was drafted, in 
France, and, being unable to go to the field himself, 
hired a substitute and paid a good price for him, 
who went to the war, and fell on one of the battle- 
fields. In a subsequent draft, the same man was 
drafted again. He went to the recruiting office 
and produced his papers, proving that he had hired 
and paid for a substitute, who had died on the 
field; and the entry was accordingly made against 
his name: "Died in the person of his substitute on 
the battlefield of Rivoli." The believer, standing 

before a violated law, as one who has found in 

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Philosophy of Atonement 

Jesus Christ his Substitute, may claim immunity 
from the desert of his sin; he may boldly affirm, "I 
died in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the 
battlefield of Calvary, over eighteen hundred years 
ago.* That is salvation. That is redemption. 

In America a story is told of a well known 
teacher of boys, in whose school the pupils them- 
selves made rules for their own government, and 
attached to them what penalties they thought fit. 
One little fellow, however, more than once violated 
the law, and became liable to a flogging. He was 
called up, according to the rules of the boys them- 
selves, to have the rod laid on his back. Just 
then the door of the school opened, and in came his 
elder brother, who, taking in the whole situation at 
a glance, said to the master: "Would you have any 
objection to my taking the whipping for my 
brother?" "Do you think, boys, the honour of the 
school and its laws would be sufficiently upheld?" 
was the teacher's appeal. They held up their 
hands, whereupon the brother bared his back and 
took the whipping instead of the offender. The 
principle of substitution was again illustrated. 

Another touching story is told, as to the war 
between Russia and Circassia in the middle of the 
last century. The prophet chief Schamyl, almost 

* II Cor. v;i5; Rom. vi:l-8. 
179 



God's Living Oracles 

adored by his followers, found that some one was 
exposing to the enemy his designs and plans; and 
he made a decree, which he promulgated to his 
followers, that if the traitor were found out, one 
hundred lashes on the bare back should be admin- 
istered for the offence. A few days later, it was 
discovered, to his astonishment, that the guilty 
party was his own mother. He went into fasting 
and retirement for two days, and coming out, 
pallid and ghastly, ordered his mother to be brought 
from the tent and her back bared for the scourge. 
He stood by while one, two, three, four, five of 
those fearful lashes gashed her flesh; then he bade 
the executioner arrest his blows, bared his own 
back, and took the other ninety-five lashes on his 
own person, till the flesh hung in shreds. The 
effect, it is said, was electric — his followers were 
melted, and even his mother was utterly subdued, 
as she could never have been by mere force. This 
exhibition of vicarious love and of the principle of 
substitution and satisfaction, accomplished all 
desirable ends more effectively than the full 
penalty executed on the offender. 

Thus the principle of substitution is not entirely 
foreign to humanity, and the beauty and power of 
it have been many a time acknowledged even in 

the circles of society. Neither is the principle of 

i8o 



Philosophy of Atonement 

representation absolutely new. Certainly those 
who live under a constitutional government and 
have a congress or a parliament to which they elect 
members, ought to understand that principle as a 
very common one. A man sent to a legislature 
from any district is called a representative, because 
his views and acts are supposed to represent his 
constituency. If they find otherwise, and he does 
not vote according to their convictions and will, 
they displace him by another. The principle of 
representation is that someone shall be appointed 
by mutual consent to take another's place. 
God appoints Jesus Christ to take the place of 
pentitent, believing sinners. They joyfully con- 
sent, and His acts become their acts, His obedience 
their obedience. His suffering their suffering. 
Their sin He represents, and atones for it. Their 
imperfection He represents, and makes up for it 
by His perfection, so that they are accepted in the 
Beloved, and for the Beloved's sake. That is the 
principle of representation. Though it will be 
referred to, subsequently, it belongs to the matter 
now under consideration. 

As to the principle of identification, in the Bible, 
as we have seen, the identification of the Redeemer 
with the redeemed is represented under the figure 

of the marriage bond. There being no identity so 

i8i 



God's Living Oracles 

complete as that between husband and wife in the 
ideal marital relation, God employs this to ex- 
press Christ's identification with the believer, both 
in the Old Testament and in the New. It is hinted 
in the first chapter of Genesis. When Adam 
fell asleep, and from the rib taken out of his side, 
God made the woman, and brought her to the man 
to be his "counterpart," as the Hebrew expresses 
it, it was the forecast of the Church as taken out of 
the wounded side of Jesus Christ, bone of His bone, 
flesh of His flesh, to be His bride. This is a double 
identification ; for when a man weds a woman, the 
woman marries the man; and he is her husband no 
more truly than she is his wife; there cannot be a 
onesided identification. If Christ is the bridegroom 
of the Church, the Church is the bride of Christ 
and, hence, where He is, she must be; His glory 
must be her glory; and His eternal home must be 
her eternal home. 



182 



CHAPTER X 
The Bible and the God-man 

The person of the God-Man is the central figure 
of Biblical revelation. This theme we approach 
only with the deepest reverence, humility, and 
sense of ignorance and inadequacy. Of all the 
truths revealed in the Word of God, this, perhaps, 
surpasses the rest in grandeur and importance, 
as a disclosure of the divine philosophy of salva- 
tion. 

We are told, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, that 
the mystery of Christ, which in other ages was 
hidden from the sons of men, was especially 
revealed to Paul; indeed, he seems to have had 
unveiled to him some seven mysteries of which he 
alone ti*eats in his various Epistles. The greatest 
of all these mysteries, in reference to redemption, 
is presented in fullness only in the first two chapters 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews,* and in these two 
chapters some particular verses are of special 
importance : 

Chapter I: i. God, who at sundry times and 

* Perhaps the greatest argument for a Pauline authorship of this 
epistle. 

183 



God's Living Oracles 

in divers manners, spake in time past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, 

2. Hath in these last days spoken unto us by 
His Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all 
things, by whom also He made the worlds; 

3. Who being the brightness of His glory, and 
the express image of His person, and upholding 
all things by the word of His power, when He 
had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the 
right hand of the Majesty on high; 

4. Being made so much better than the angels, 
as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excel- 
lent name than they. 

Chap. II: 6. But one in a certain place testified, 
saying. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
or the son of man, that thou visitest him ? 

7. Thou madest Him a little lower than the 
angels; thou crownedst Him with glory and 
honour, and didst set Him over the works of thy 
hands : 

8. Thou hast put all things in subjection under 
His feet. For in that He put all in subjection 
under Him, he left nothing that is not put under 
Him ; 

9. But we see Jesus, who was made a little 
lower than the angels, for the suffering of death. 



184 



The God-Man 

crowned with glory and honour: that He by the 
grace of God should taste death for every man. 
And then from the 14th verse to the end: 

14. Forasmuch then as the children are par- 
takers of flesh and blood, He also Himself 
likewise took part of the same ; that through death 
He might destroy him that had the power of death, 
that is, the devil; 

15. And deliver them who through fear of death 
were all their lifetime subject to bondage. 

16. For verily He took not on Him the nature 
of angels (or, "laid not hold upon angels"); but 
He took on Him (or "laid hold of") the seed of 
Abraham : 

17. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to 
be made like unto His brethren, that He might 
be a merciful and faithful high priest in things 
pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the 
sins of the people : 

18. For in that He himself hath suffered being 
tempted, he is able to succour them that are 
tempted. 

In examining this theme of the God-Man, these 
thirteen verses need to be kept in mind. The first 
four afhrm unequivocally seven facts which prove 
that Christ was the Son of God; then seven other 
facts are specified in the second chapter, which 

185 



God's Living Oracles 

prove that he was equally the Son of Man. There 
is no attempt to reconcile the apparent paradox; 
the two aspects of this duality are put before us, 
the two natures, combined in one personality as 
they never have been before, and never will be 
again, — constituting Him a wholly unique person 
The very grandeur and uniqueness of the concep- 
tion forbid that it should have proceeded from 
man ; it is a coin having the stamp of the heavenly 
mint upon it, the image and superscription of God. 

A "mystery," in New Testament usage, is a 
sacred secret, long kept hidden, and, while so 
hidden, absolutely impenetrable by man; a secret, 
however, now revealed by the Holy Spirit of God, 
but only to the initiated, that is, to those who 
learn God's method of solution or interpretation. 
There is a chamber of Mystery, containing priceless 
and unknown treasures, whose door no man can, 
of himself, unlock, but to which God has given a 
key ; and he who reverently uses it enters into and 
explores the wonders that are within. Such is the 
Bible idea of a mystery — an open secret to all be- 
lievers who are ready to be taught and led of the 
Spirit of God. This was Bunyan's thought in his 
"House of the Interpreter." 

The consummate mystery of the God-Man can- 
not be explained by man. Of course not; if it 

i86 



The God-Man 

could, it would cease to be a divine myster}^ 
having the stamp of the inscrutable God upon it. 

Both the divine and the human aspects of the 
God-Man are here plainly presented, each as abso- 
lutely beyond a doubt. 

(i») In the first place, Christ was the final mouth- 
piece of God. God had spoken before in the 
prophets of old time, but the last of His utter- 
ances, and the greatest of them, were through Jesus 
Christ, as the Word of God, the very embodiment 
of His thought. 

(2.) Christ is the universal Heir. All God's pos- 
sessions are Christ's possessions also, and none 
others can get any part in the possessions of God 
except as "joint heirs" with Him, the Universal 
Heir. 

(3.) He was the Creator of the worlds. "By 
whom He also made the worlds." The word is 
"Ages," and the idea is that the whole of the 
temporal order is due to Jesus Christ, who has 
formed it and framed it for the glory of redemp- 
tion. 

(4.) He was the effulgence of the glory of God; as 
closely related to God as the light is to the sun : "In 
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God." In the begin- 
ning was the light, and the light was with the sun, 

J87 



God's Living Oracles 

and the light was the sun. He is the very shining 
of God, the effulgence of His glory. 

(5.) "The express image of His person." God is 
an invisible Spirit; once for all the Godhead has 
taken a visible form, and that visible form is 
Jesus Christ, who is as closely related to God as 
the body is to the soul that inhabits it, and is 
manifested through it. 

(6.) Again, "Upholding all things by the Word 
of His power." Not only is Christ the Creator, but 
the Upholder and Sustainer of the whole temporal 
order, which would, therefore, fall into absolute 
ruin but for His upholding word of power. 

(7.) Last of all, "He sat down on the right hand 
of the Majesty on High," Joint Sovereign, with 
God, of the Universe. 

These are the seven proofs of His divinity. He 
is as closely linked with God as a word is with the 
thought it expresses; as a body is with the soul 
that inhabits it; as light is with the orb that 
radiates it forth ; as an heir is with the owner who 
transfers to him all his property. There is no 
mistaking this teaching, and those who do not 
believe in the deity of Christ, might as well bum 
their Bibles, unless they can eliminate this Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews. 



188 



The God-Man 

Equally strong statements are made as to 
Christ's humanity: 

(i.) He came down to man's level, made "a 
little lower than the angels." 

(2.) He took man's nature without its sinful- 
ness; He became properly and perfectly man: 
**Took on Him the seed of Abraham." 

(3.) He suffered man's temptations that He 
might become the succourer of tempted souls. 

(4.) He "tasted death for every man," and by 
Himself, incapable of sin, "purged our sins." 

(5.) He made all believing saints to be one 
mystical body with Himself. "For both He that 
sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of 
one." That language cannot be mistaken. 

(6.) He destroyed "Him that had the Power of 
Death" — ^man's mortal enemy, the devil. 

(7.) And last, He restores to humanity the 
sceptre which was lost in the fall of Adam, so 
that the eighth Psalm is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 

Here are equally plain indications and affirma- 
tions of Christ's perfect humanity, as before of His 
perfect divinity; so that in this scripture there is 
presented a unique being, absolutely God, abso- 
lutely man, yet uniting the divine and the human 
natures in one proper personality. 

What was the problem presented by man's fall? 

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God's Living Oracles 

Man was created with prophetic intuition of God's 
will, with priestly right to God's fellowship, and 
with kingly exercise of sovereignty like unto God 
Himself. The devil had occupied a supernal 
position as an angel, possibly an archangel like 
Gabriel and Michael, but fell from his high position 
and descended to the lowest depths, the infernal. 
When man was created and put upon this planet, 
with his prophetic privileges, his priestly access to 
God, and his sovereignty and dominion, the devil, 
envious of man's position, came up from the 
infernal level to the earthly or terrestrial level, 
and, presenting subtle temptations before our 
first parents, accomplished their fall. The con- 
sequence was (i), that man lost the proper gift of 
eternal life, which is something far beyond mere 
immortality; (2), he lost his liberty as a son of 
God, and became a slave of the devil; (3), he lost 
his sovereignty, the devil, by right of conquest, 
seizing his sceptre of dominion over the earth, and 
becoming the God of this world. 

In order to repair and restore the ruin of the 
fall, eternal life must somehow be given back to 
man, his slavery exchanged for liberty, and his 
lost sceptre of dominion wrested from the hands 
of the devil and restored to the hands of man. 

That was the problem of redemption. How did 

190 



The God-Man 

God answer and fulfil the conditions of that 
problem? We are told most fully in the two 
chapters now before us. 

It was necessary, in God's plan, that there 
should be a second representative of the race. 
The first representative had fallen, and in him the 
race had sunk hopelessly, and the only way to 
redeem mankind was to give the race, as such, a 
new opportunity, a new probation; and so a 
second representative man was needed, to stand 
where Adam stood, undergo similar temptations, 
and overcome where man was overcome. 

It is conceivable that God might have permitted 
a second man to take the place of the first Adam, 
and try if he could wrest the sceptre out of the 
devil's hands and regain it for the race; but, in 
such a case, a man would have been pitted against 
a fallen angel, and, as the first man fell before the 
subtle wiles of the devil, so might another fall who 
attempted to represent the race, and then the 
conditions would be worse and more hopeless than 
ever. 

It is conceivable also that an angel might have 

been permitted by God to identify himself with the 

human race, become a son of man and undertake 

to stand as the race's representative; but this 

would imply a struggle between an unfallen and a 

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God's Living Oracles 

fallen angel, and should the angelic man fall under 
the temptation of the devil, the second experiment 
would end only in failure. 

There was one Being who could stand for man, 
and who was able to cope with all the powers, 
lies and wiles of the devil, and that was the Son of 
God. He undertook to become Man, that being 
identified with man He might have the right to 
stand in his place as his representative; yet being 
identified, on the other hand, with God, He was 
too mighty for Satan to overcome, and so He 
undertook that work of redemption to which 
neither man nor angel was equal. 

Just what He did, though all this pertains to 
the deepest things of God, is revealed here, the 
key, at least, being given in this Epistle. He 
undertook to taste death for every man, and to 
purge away sins in behalf of a fallen race. 

In the God-Man is again suggested that idea or 
representation, already found to be a necessary 
factor in the redemption scheme. In this passage 
in Hebrews, more light is thrown upon this par- 
ticular theme than from any other one scriptural 
point of view. We are wont to think of the Lord 
Jesus Christ as the representative of the whole 
body of believers — ^what is called His mystical 

body — the Church. This is grandly true; but the 

192 



The God-Man 

question often arises whether, as the Second Man, 
His representation reaches any further than the 
redeemed Church. He is called, in the fifteenth 
chapter of I Corinthians, both "the Second Man" 
and the *'Last Adam." The Second Man, because 
there was a first, before Him; the Last Adam, 
because there shall be none after Him. When this 
fact of a larger representation of the Adamic race is 
first brought out clearly in the fifth chapter of 
Romans, we read: ''Nevertheless, death reigned 
from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, 
who is the figure of Him that is to come ('the 
figure of the Coming One')" Thus the first time 
that Adam, as the first man, is explicitly declared 
to be the figure of Jesus Christ as the Coming One, 
the Second Man, the Last Adam, it is in imme- 
diate connection with the statement that death 
had reigned even over those who had not sinned 
after the similitude of Adam's transgression. 
The Holy Spirit makes no mistakes. There must 
be some reason why that conception of Christ, as 
the New Head of the Adamic Race, should be first 
brought clearly to view in the New Testament, as 
having some bearing on the mystery of the reign of 
death over so many that had not sinned after the 
similitude of Adam's transgression. Jesus Christ 

193 



God's Living Oracles 

is declared to be "the Saviour of all men, especially 
of those that beheve;"* and again to be "the pro- 
pitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but also 
for the whole world, "f 

This is no field for idle and profitless speculation ; 
but it would appear that, in some sense, Jesus 
Christ represents, not only the redeemed believing 
Church, but the world of humanity, the race of 
Adam. What that representation is, we now 
inquire. Perad venture these scriptural hints 
may help to an answer. 

The key-note is doubtless given in this fifth 
chapter of Romans, in the very sentence already 
quoted: "Death reigned from Adam to Moses even 
over them that had not sinned after the similitude of 
Adam's transgression.'' Thousands and millions 
of little children died then, as now, before the 
period of intelligent moral agency, and, therefore, 
before they could intelligently and voluntarily sin 
after the similitude of Adam's transgression, — 
before they could either know God's law, or, 
knowingly, violate it. What became of their 
departed spirits ? Is it conceivable that they were 
consigned to hell? But, if they were admitted to 
heaven, it must be through the atoning work of 
Christ, otherwise there would be human beings in 

* I Timothy iv;10. 1 1 John ii:2. See Greek. 

194 



The God-Man 

heaven that come there without connection with 
the atonement; but, if they are there through His 
mediatorial work, it must be on the principle of 
this new Adamic representation. Beside these 
millions of infant children, other millions, not 
children in years, never reach the age of moral 
responsibility, — imbeciles, idiots, and others whom 
God sees not to be morally responsible or account- 
able, for reasons of which we know nothing, and of 
which He alone can judge. If they are saved, as 
all of us believe, must it not be likewise through 
this wider representation of the whole race in this 
Second Man? All disciples hold a sort of un- 
written belief that such are saved, and that, on 
the ground of Christ's work, those who have not 
sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression 
may be saved without the similitude of Adam's 
faith. In other words, that, so far as the offspring 
of Adam have fallen only generically in him, they 
rise absolutely in Christ; but, when they individu- 
ally fall, for themselves, by voluntary sin, they 
must rise, for themselves, that is, in connection 
with the exercise of voluntary faith. That un- 
formulated creed seems to accord with the doc- 
trine of Holy Scriptures; and, if this construction 
be correct, the divine philosophy of salvation makes 
provision for the salvation of little children and all 

195 



God's Living Oracles 

other irresponsible descendants of Adam who die 
without having sinned after the similitude of his 
transgression. 

Some speculative theologians have argued that 
the whole race were present in spirit and actually 
participated in Adam's sin. If so, no one has 
certainly any recollection of it. The fact is, human 
philosophy and theology utterly fail to solve this 
great enigma ; but a view seems to be presented 
here which is open to no objection, and solves the 
problem. God extended no mercy to fallen 
angels; they appear to have had no redeemer or 
offer of redemption; possibly, because each fell for 
himself, there being no family relationship, involv- 
ing unborn generations. But His love yearned 
over the unborn children of Adam, who would 
inherit the consequences of his sin without sharing 
its guilt; and, immediately after his sin and fall, 
God graciously gave the first promise of redemp- 
tion, — that the Seed of the woman should bruise 
the serpent's head. 

In St. Andrew's, Scotland, an epitaph in the 
churchyard both evidences and expresses the 
substance of this belief and hope as held by our 
ancestors, that Christ was, in some sense, a rep- 
resentative of the whole race, and that many, 



196 



The God-Man 

alike incapable of voluntary transgression or 
voluntary faith, reach heaven through His death: 

"Bold Infidelity, turn pale and die, 
Beneath this stone four infants' ashes lie; 

Say, are they lost or saved ? 
If death's by sin, they've sinned, for they are here; 
If heaven's by works, in heaven they can't appear. 

Reason. Oh, how depraved. 
Turn to the Bible's sacred page, the knot's untied, 
They died, for Adam sinned; they live, for Jesus 

died." 

We are taught that, in order to share man's 
suffering, sorrow and temptation, in order to be 
made "sin for us" and a "curse" in man's behalf, 
the Son of God must become man, for only as man 
could He die ; but it was equally necessary that He 
should not remain under the power of death, for as 
the Son of God, He was the Prince of Life and 
could not die, but had a deathless life. Therefore, 
great as the mystery is. He became man that He 
might suffer death for man, but being the Son of 
God, He could not, even as to His humanity, be 
holden under the power of death; and so resurrec- 
tion from the dead, and ascension to the right hand 
of the throne of God, were the natural and neces- 
sary return of the Son of God to His own place in 

197 



God's Living Oracles 

heaven and on the throne. Thus a wonderful 
work was wrought for man. The fall brought 
death here, and, after death, a second death, 
beyond which is no life ; but the Son of God came to 
give the believer life here, and life hereafter, and 
beyond that life, no death. The exact reversal of 
all the previous conditions was possible through 
the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

The climax of this mystery is reached, however, 
only in identification, which is a double fact; for, if 
Christ were identified with man, man must be cor- 
respondingly identified with Christ. There cannot 
be a one-sided identity. By as much as a husband 
belongs to a wife, she belongs to him; and by as 
much as Christ became one with man, by so much 
did man become one with Christ. This is the 
crowning conception that the whole revealed scheme 
of redemption puts before us. 

Had a second man been permitted to stand for 
the race, and had conquered him by whom the first 
man was conquered, he could have done nothing 
more than put man back where he was when he 
fell, restoring him to a terrestrial level of sover- 
eignty and dominion. If an angel had become 
one with man, and had overcome Satan in man's 
behalf, all he could have done would have been to 

lift man at best to an angelic level. But, when 

198 



The God-Man 

the Son of God became man, and identified man 
with Himself, and overcame the devil, it was 
inevitable that He should lift the believer, past the 
human and angelic, to a divine level. Such is the 
teaching of this very Scripture. The chapter that 
demonstrates that Christ was more than an angel, 
infinitely lifted above the highest angelic ranks, 
tells us at the close, that the angels are all minis- 
tering spirits sent forth to minister to them that 
shall be heirs of salvation. The children used to 
sing in Sunday-school : "I want to be an angel," but 
in Jesus Christ the believer is lifted to a higher 
rank than angels, for, 

"Never did angels taste, above, 
* Redeeming grace and dying love." 

The humblest believer can preach better than Gab- 
riel could, for he can say, "I am a sinner saved 
by grace," which no angel can say. And, in the 
mystical unfoldings of truth in the Apocalyptic 
visions, whenever saints and angels are seen 
together, the saints are next the throne, and the 
angels are round about the saints. Not an angel 
in all that vast host can say that he belongs to 
Christ as a member of His body; or in the same 
sense with the believer, ''I am a son of God, and a 

joint heir with Jesus Christ." Some angels might 

199 



God's Living Oracles 

envy saints, and gladly change places with God's 
redeemed ones. This is overwhelming, and when 
it first bursts on the view of a believer, he can 
hardly restrain himself. He feels as though he 
had suddenly been lifted up to the highest heaven, 
and was looking on scenes and hearing sounds 
which it is "unlawful for a man to utter." 

In an American city, a lawyer, much esteemed 
and high in social life, found in the northern part 
of the State, among the Indian tribes, a young 
Indian maiden, in whom he became deeply inter- 
ested, and whom he ultimately married. He 
brought her to the city, totally undisciplined and 
uneducated, though virtuous and ingenuous. He 
then secured educational culture for her through 
teachers in English, drawing and music, and gave 
her such opportunities as wealth and love could 
afford. Meanwhile, however, she was accepted 
in society as the wife of a distinguished citizen. 

Our Lord Jesus Christ came down into this world 
to redeem and wed as His bride a believing human- 
ity. He did not, however, stay on the level of 
humanity, but He carried humanity back with Him 
toward His own level ; and the ultimate end of man's 
redemption will be that "he that overcometh shall 
sit with Him on His throne, as He also overcame, 

and is set down with His Father upon His throne." 

200 



The God-Man 

No man would dare to say that, were it not written 
in the Holy Scripture, (Rev. iii: 21.) 

Four levels are suggested in these two chap- 
ters in Hebrews: 

(i.) High up above all others, the divine level. 

(2.) Far below it, the angelic level. 

(3.) A little below that, the human level. 

(4.) And below that, the infernal level, that of 
the fallen angels. 

Man was originally on the human or earthly 
level. Satan comes from beneath — his own level — 
overcomes man, takes his sceptre, and drags him 
down to the infernal level; for in the twenty-fifth 
chapter of Matthew we are told that the same 
"fire prepared for the devil and his angels" awaits 
those whom Christ finally condemns as workers 
of iniquity. 

Jesus Christ, coming down from the highest 

heavens, passed the angelic to the human level; 

in a sense. He descended to the infernal, that He 

might there contest the whole matter with the 

betrayer of man, and "destroy him who had the 

power of death," and demolish his empire. But, 

having taken man's nature and betrothed a believing 

humanity to Himself, was it not in the necessity 

of the case that, when He went back to His own 

level He should carry back with Him, past the 

201 



God's Living Oracles 

angelic level to the heavenly, the redeemed body 
of humanity that He had wedded? The man 
whose story has been told did not go down to the 
plane of the poverty and ignorance of her he 
wedded, but rather lifted her to his own plane of 
wealth, intelligence and social position; and our 
Lord Jesus Christ knew, when He identified Him- 
self with n\an, that, in so far as He was wedded to 
a believing humanity. He would lift that believing 
humanity beyond the human or angelic plane, into 
the very atmosphere and presence of God. (Comp. 
John XVII : 21-26). 

The glimpse given us here of this marvellous 
truth, also hints the reason why that mystery of 
Christ can never be fully unfolded in the present 
age, but waits for future unveiling — as we are told 
in the Epistle to the Ephesians: "That in the 
ages to come, He might show what is the exceeding 
greatness of His love and grace in His kindness 
toward us in Christ Jesus." 

Believing children of God, however delighting 

in fellowship with Him, are painfully conscious 

of so many defects, deficiencies, inconsistencies 

and sins that it is impossible to realize such a 

future as before them; but the eternal God, with 

Whom is no past, present or future, and to Whom 

all coming realities are equally present facts, looks 

202 



The God-Man 

past existing imperfections, faults, and whatever 
is due to the taint of sin in the nature, and sees the 
absolute faultlessness which will be apparent 
when Christ presents the believer before the 
presence of His glory. In God's eye, every saint 
is already perfected in Christ Jesus. We do not 
see it, here; angels do not see it now, though they 
desire to look into the boundless, unfathomable 
depths of infinite grace; and so it remains to be 
seen in the ages to come, when corruption shall be 
left behind forever, and even the body of this 
himiiliation shall be changed into the likeness of 
the body of His glory. Then, in eternal youth, 
in the cloudless atmosphere of an untainted joy, 
with a perfected holiness, believers will stand be- 
fore Him; and then, by the Church, shall be made 
known to the principalities and powers in heavenly 
places, how stupendous was the problem of redemp- 
tion, and the divine solution of it. 

Such a future lies before every believing child 
of God. There may be a cripple, a child of crime, 
born of drunken and depraved parents, and in the 
very body carrying the terrible penalty of the sins 
of generations that preceded; and yet in God's eyes 
that poor crippled body is lustrous with trans- 
figured glory. The taint of human heredity is 

gone, and only the holy heredity of Christ is left. 

203 



God's Living Oracles 

The corruption of the human blood is displaced 
by the cleansing of the blood that purges from sin ; 
and that humble disciple, — ^bodily, mentally and 
morally a cripple, — contests with angels beauty 
of character, likeness to God, and unspeakable 
bliss. It is incredible, but for God's revelation; 
it is unmatchable, even as a revelation. 

Every man makes his election as to who shall 
be his representative, the first Adam, or the last 
Adam. Repentance is turning from the first 
Adam to the second. And, somewhat as we elect 
a representative in Parliament or Congress, send- 
ing one to be the man of our choice, we may elect 
whether Adam the first or Adam the second shall 
stand as our representative, before God. The 
first Adam represents fall and ruin; the last Adam 
represents rising and restoration, and we may 
choose between the two. Repentance gives up 
and renounces all connection with the first Adam, 
and faith takes the Second Man as representative, 
henceforth, to call Him Saviour and Lord. This 
is translation from the kingdom of darkness into 
the kingdom of light, and from the power of Satan 
unto God. 

In America many years ago, in Boston, Wendell 

Phillips, the great anti-slavery agitator, heard Dr. 

Lyman Beecher preach upon God's creative and 

204 



The God-Man 

redemptive right in man. He was so overwhelmed 
with this thought of what Jesus Christ had done 
for a lost race, and the claims of redemption upon 
himself, that he went straight home, literally fell 
down on his face on the floor of his bedchamber, and 
said, "O, my God, I belong to Thee. Take Thou 
thine own." And from that time forth to the day 
of his death, he bore testimony that he had never 
seen a thing to be contrary to the will of God with- 
out hating it. 

We may add that, to a true student of Holy 
Scripture, there is neither a question that Jesus 
Christ is Deity, nor that to Him, as Deity, worship 
belongs. 

The late Dr. Fuller, of Baltimore, was a popu- 
lar, interesting and evangelical preacher. Being 
zealous for Christian unity, he preached one morn- 
ing on the necessity and duty of magnifying things 
that unite, and minimizing the things that divide, 
believers. He represented this truth in the light 
of the heavenly state, showing that it is not worth 
while in this world to make so much of that of 
which we shall make so little when we meet fellow 
believers above. In order to show the absurdity 
of sectarian divisions, he represented those who 
belong to various Christian bodies, and who were 

unduly jealous of their denominational history and 

205 



God's Living Oracles 

tenets, as being in heaven and looking around to 
find their fellow Christians who belonged to the 
same particular branch of the Church: Baptists 
looking for their immersed friends, Methodists for 
their fellow members of class-meetings, Presby- 
terians for the zealous defenders of Presbyterian 
ideas of law and order, and Episcopalians looking 
for the true Apostolic Succession. At the close of 
his sermon, a Unitarian friend said: "Dr. Fuller, I 
am surprised at your lack of charity; you really 
did not represent any Unitarians at all as being in 
heaven." Dr. Fuller replied: "If you will come 
to-night, I will give you a glimpse as to the feelings 
of a Unitarian there." In the course of his sermon, 
he imagined a Unitarian as stationed with John 
on the Island of Patmos, and permitted to look and 
enter through the open door and see the things 
which should be hereafter, and he described his 
emotions. In the first place, he witnessed that 
scene in the fifth chapter of Revelation, where the 
Book was in the right hand of Him that sat upon 
the throne, and no man nor angel dared to touch 
or even to look upon it. The Lion-Lamb of God, 
slain for sin, but triumphant as a King, came and 
took the Book, and then he heard the acclamations 
of the saints: "Thou art worthy to take the Book, 

and to unloose the seals thereof, for Thou wast 

206 



The God-Man 

slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, 

out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and 

nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and 

priests; and we shall reign on the earth." And 

round about that company, he observed countless 

angels, ascribing to the same slain but risen Lamb, 

all worship: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 

to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 

strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." 

He went along a little further, and saw a great 

multitude standing on the sea of glass, and they 

were lifting up their voices in similar acclamations, 

and ascribing "Salvation unto our God, and unto 

the Lamb." "Why," he said, "there are no 

Unitarians in that company." 

He went a little further, and saw a white horse, 

and a Conqueror riding upon him, and upon His 

vesture, and upon His thigh was the mysterious 

name written: "King of kings, and Lord of lords," 

and a countless band of worshippers and warriors 

followed in his train. He went yet further, and 

saw the New Jerusalem let dov/n from God out of 

Heaven, having the glory of God. He saw no 

temple therein, and found that the reason was that 

the "Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the 

Temple of it." He found no light even of the sun 

therein, and learned that "The Lord God Almighty 

207 



God's Living Oracles 

and the Lamb are the Light of it." And he found 
on the throne, as joint Sovereigns, God and the 
Lamb that was slain. "Why," he said, "There is 
nobody here that does not worship the Lamb 
jointly with God Himself. I cannot stay here un- 
less I join this worship. ' ' And so he moved among 
the throng and waved his palm; he struck his harp, 
and cried out: "Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain! Salvation unto the Lamb!" 

Dr. Fuller concluded his sermon. His Unitarian 
neighbour walked up the aisle, shook his hand 
earnestly with both his own, and said: "Jesus 
Christ has conquered. Let me bow here, and, 
like Thomas, say 'My Lord, and my GodT " 



208 



CHAPTER XI 

The Bible and God's Thoughts 

The Golden Milestone, in the City of Rome, 
was the point at which the many roads, running 
from all directions in the Empire, met and con- 
verged. 

By at least fifty different lines of argument and 
demonstration, we may approach as a goal the con- 
clusion that the Holy Scriptures are of divine 
origin. To one of these reference has been made 
hitherto only incidentally, yet its value might well 
entitle it to fill the space of an entire volume: 
namely, the mark of God's mind and heart upon 
this book. 

In the fifty-fifth chapter of the prophecy of 
Isaiah, 8th to 13th verses, there is a distinct chal- 
lenge from Almighty God to test His Word by two 
great criteria: 

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts; 
Neither are your ways, My ways." 

(i.) Are the thoughts contained in this book 

superhuman thoughts? And are the ways or 

209 



God's Living Oracles 

methods or plans of working suggested here like 
unto man's, or unlike unto man's? That is the 
first test. 

(2.) What is the moral character and power of 
this book? Is it superior to all others in moral 
and spiritual teaching? And, especially, is it 
superior to all ethical or moral systems as a dynam- 
ic force in the transformation of character, and 
the regeneration of human society? 

We confine ourselves for the present to the first : 
"My thoughts are not your thoughts" — ^that is, 
God's conceptions of things are not man's con- 
ceptions. The method God uses to express this 
is to remind us how high the heavens are above the 
earth, — even so high are His ways and thoughts 
above those of men. They belong to an infinitely 
elevated plane ; His thoughts of things and ways of 
working are not only unlike men's, but are often 
opposite or contrary and contradictory to the 
dictates of human wisdom. 

In Cudworth's "Intellectual System of the Uni- 
verse," the bottom thought is that the signs of a 
divine mind are impressed upon the universe of 
matter. The difference between the Corelli Mar- 
bles and the blossoming of stone in the Cathedral 
of Milan is the difference between the bed-rock in 

the quarry, and the sculptured stone that has been 

210 



The Thoughts of God 

shapen and polished by the genius of a master-ar- 
chitect; the difference between the master painting 
and the rude pigments on the palette, is that brains 
are mixed with the colours, — the artist's mind 
manifests itself on the canvas. If a mass of iron 
filings are put upon a sheet of paper and a bar 
magnet underneath, there will be a strange activity 
on the part of the iron filings: they will assume, 
as though instinct with life, various circular and 
spiral forms, each particle attaching itself to those 
on either side. The invisible current of the 
magnet shapes that chaos into the symmetry and 
beauty of a cosmos. 

The Bible is composed of letters and words and 
sentences, but an invisible current of Divine Life 
pervades the book, and makes it God's Living 
Oracles, and so its contents assume beauty, pro- 
portion, symmetry. Letters form into words; 
words into sentences, and sentences into para- 
graphs in which the mind of God is expressed. 
Just so far as it is possible that a book should be, 
this book is the mirror of the mind of God. His 
intellectual impress is on it, organising its truths 
into a divine system, and there is no other book 
that compares with it as to the intellectual rank 
of its contents. 

The word "idea" has been thought by some to 

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God's Living Oracles 

combine two Latin words — in Deo — "a thought 
in God" — a conception that is first in the divine 
mind. In this sense the Bible is full of ideas; 
thoughts that, born in the mind of God, belong to 
a far more exalted plane than the thoughts of men. 

For instance, the idea of Infinity — a word which 
seems to express the natural or essential attribute 
of deity, in a general way, better than most others. 
Infinite literally means "without bounds." There 
is no limit to God — to His power, for He is omnipo- 
tent ; to His knowledge for He is omniscient ; to His 
presence, for He is omnipresent; to His existence, 
for He is eternal. He is not only infinite, but 
immutable, without change as without bounds, 
for change implies either degeneracy or improve- 
ment — a change for worse or for better; but God, 
being perfect, cannot change; infinity therefore 
involves immutability. 

Such an idea of infinity, with its necessary cor- 
relative, immutability, is a conception of God 
drawn from his Word and found nowhere else. 
The story is that when Mr. Gillespie was called upon, 
in that great Westminster assembly, to pray — the 
assembly at the time seeking some proper desig- 
nation or definition of God — he began: "O, God, 
Thou art a Spirit, Infinite, Eternal and Unchange- 
able in Thy Being, Wisdom, Power, Holiness, 

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The Thoughts of God 

Justice, Goodness and Truth;" and there came 
upon that body at once the conviction that God had 
given a definition of Himself, in the opening 
sentence of that prayer; and so those very words 
came to be embodied in that compendium of 
doctrine, "the Westminster Catechism." 

Where did Gillespie get this conception? Not 
from any heathen source or human writing, but 
from a long, reverent and prayerful study of the 
Word of God. There alone he learned that God 
is a Spirit, Infinite, Eternal, Unchangeable. 

The Grand Canon of the Colorado, in America, 
is one of the wonders of the world. It is an 
immense chasm, twelve miles in width, and two 
hundred miles in length, with perpendicular walls 
six thousand feet high on each side. Sixty cities 
like the metropolis of the world with all its hundred 
suburbs could be put in that chasm; the Falls of 
Niagara or the Falls of Victoria, in some of the 
fissures of those rocks, would seem no more than a 
mountain cascade. St. Paul's Cathedral at London 
or St. Peter's at Rome would be a mere child's toy 
on the floor of that great chasm; but even this 
gives no adequate conception of God's infinity. 

Sirius, the brightest of the fixed stars, is so far 
off that its light, flying 186,000 miles a second, 

took nearly nine years to get to this planet. There 

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God's Living Oracles 

are other stars, within the reach of telescopic 

vision whose rays took twenty, forty, eighty, a 

hundred years to reach us. The interstellar spaces 

are so vast that our entire solar system, dropped in 

the sea of this immeasurable infinitude, would be 

but as a few pebbles dropped in the ocean. He 

who hewed out the Grand Cafion of the Colorado, 

who stretched out the interstellar spaces of the 

heavens, is the God that gave this Book, and it 

shows that He is its Author, for in it we constantly 

meet the thoughts and terms of infinity, the natural 

dialect of God. 

We have already seen, when adverting to the 

vast distances and dimensions of space, what 

language the Word of God uses. "As the heavens 

are higher than the earth" — not the heavens 

where the clouds float, a few miles up; not the 

heavens where the visible stars are seen, though 

millions upon millions of miles away; but the 

depths that no telescope can penetrate, beyond 

even the power of photography though it 

catches the image of stars invisible even to the 

telescopic eye. That is the way God speaks in the 

Bible. No one else would naturally use such 

terms, or knows enough to do so. They befit 

Almighty God only. 

Again, "As the heaven is high above the earth, 

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The Thoughts of God 

so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. 
As far as the East is from the West, so far hath He 
removed our transgressions from us ... . The 
mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting 
upon them that fear Him."* Here are the three 
dimensions of astronomy : Infinite height, breadth, 
and length. Go as high as we may, there is still a 
height beyond. However far we go east, there is 
still an east; however far west, there is a west 
beyond. God says of sins forgiven, that they are 
banished to such remoteness that only infinite 
opposite directions can express it. "And from 
everlasting to everlasting" — from an eternity that 
had no beginning to an eternity that has no end — 
that is the way He measures the length or duration 
of His love. Four dimensions are similarly 
united in the third chapter of the Epistle to the 
Ephesians: "That ye may know the breadth" — 
which is universal comprehension and infinite 
mercy; "and the length," which is eternity; "and 
the depth," going down to hell to pluck us out; 
"and the height," going up to the throne of God to 
carry us there. The Infinite God is the Author of 
this Bible: "His thoughts are not man's thoughts, 
neither are man's ways His ways," and it is 
written as though God wrote it; it is consistent 

* Psalm cm. 
215 



God's Living Oracles 

with its claims of Authorship; it has His marks 
upon it. 

Take the Biblical conception of God as a Being — 
the divine nature. God is represented in the 
Holy Scripture as Trinity — not three Gods, nor 
an association or combination of three in one; but 
a Trinity, implying three persons, but one nature. 

Three definitions God gives of Himself: *'The 
Fountain of Life," "Light," "Love." These three 
words are the keys to the Gospel according to 
John; and the first Epistle of John; and by these 
three words, their secret chambers are unlocked. 
Life stands for the sum of all being; Light, for the 
sum of all intellectual excellence; and Love, for 
the sum of all moral excellence. Hence God is 
Life, Light and Love; for, if He be the sum of all 
being, of all intellectual and of all moral excellence, 
nothing remains to be predicted of Him; every- 
thing else is already included. 

God told Moses, when he asked his name, that he 
might answer the Children of Israel when they 
should ask, "Who is He that sent you?" "I am 
that I am," i. e., "I am He Who am forever." 
Afterward He compressed it into two words: 
"I AM — hath sent you."* "I am" — ^the present 
tense of the verb "to be," joined with the first 

* Exodus IV. 
216 



The Thoughts of God 

personal pronoun, expresses not only the idea of 
endless existence, but of an eternal present. This 
is another divine conception, found nowhere else 
but in the Bible. Jesus Christ uses similar 
language when He says to the Jews, "Before 
Abraham was I-AM ' ' — not ' ' I was. ' '* Abraham had 
a past, present and future, but Jesus, being equal 
with the Father, has the past and future equally 
present before Him, and His existence is one 
eternal Now, without the successions of time that 
pertain to our moral existence. The thoughts of 
God are not as man's thoughts. 

According to the Bible conception, man has a 
three-fold nature: "I pray God your whole spirit, 
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto 
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. f This idea 
recurs in other Scriptures (I Cor. ii, and Heb. iv : 1 2) 
where the distinction between soul and spirit is 
brought out. The soul is the natural man, that 
does not see or know the things of God, and 
the spirit is the highest part of the man, 
capable of direct communication with God, en- 
lightened and illumined by the Holy Spirit. "The 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit," hints at a realm 
between the two, which, though connected with 
each, pertains exclusively to neither, and in which 

* John vin. 1 1 Thess. v: 23. 

217 



God's Living Oracles 

middle realm of being, the "thoughts and intents 
of the heart" are generated. 

Such passages of Scripture, which, together 
with others, unfold the Bible doctrine of man's 
three-fold nature, suggest a three-storied house, 
the upper story, an observatory, with skylights 
and majestic windows that look out on celestial 
prospects; the body, the lowest story, with its 
five senses, — sight, hearing, taste, touch and 
smell, opening out into the external universe, 
like doors and windows, through which to gather 
information about things without, and report 
to the soul, which is like the second story of 
the building, shut in and in darkness, but get- 
ting by way of the body, through the avenues of 
the senses, knowledge with regard to the external 
world. The topmost story, the spirit, the highest 
of all, is alone capable of direct knowledge of God, 
and an intimate communion and fellowship with 
Him. The soul seems to be that part of man's 
complex being which may thus derive its informa- 
tion with regard to the world without, through the 
senses; or of higher truth, through the intuitions 
of the spirit, which gets its knowledge not through 
the body or soul only, but through intuition and 
direct revelation from God. And, in the mysterious 

realm lying between the two, imagination, mem- 

218 



The Thoughts of God 

ory, conscience, sensibility, reason, will, gather 
impulses through body, soul and spirit, and so 
moral judgments and decisions are formed. 

Hence the disaster of the fall. When man fell, 
the spirit became a death chamber — the windows, 
darkened, the skylights covered, shut in; nothing 
left but intuitions, and those not by any means 
infallible; the vision of heaven and the stars 
lost. Regeneration is the kindling anew, in 
that spiritual death-chamber, of the life of God. 
The Tabernacle may beautifully represent the 
same truth, — the outer court, the body; the holy 
place within the veil, the soul; the holiest place 
within the second veil, the spirit. And, when man 
sinned, the Shekinah fire was quenched, but, 
when God in Jesus Christ, gives the Spirit back 
to man in regeneration, the Shekinah fire glows 
again, and fills that inner place with divine light. 
Such conceptions of man are peculiar to the Bible. 
They are the thoughts of God about man. 

The story of the creation of woman, whether 

treated as history, poem, or parable, is one of the 

most beautiful conceptions in Holy Scripture, 

God made a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, opened 

his side and took out one of the ribs, and made it 

into a woman, and brought her to the man, and He 

.said to the man, "BiDine of thy bone; flesh of thy 

219 



God's Living Oracles 

flesh; thy counterpart." The word means not 
helpmeet, but "one over against him," as bone 
corresponds to socket, as mortice to tenon; a 
counterpart, one apposite to him, not opposite. 
Each was adapted to the other so that the profi- 
ciencies of the one make up for the deficiencies of 
the other, and contrariwise. Eve was taken out of 
Adam's side; as some one has suggested, not out of 
his head to rule over him ; nor out of his arm to be 
his tool ; nor out of his foot to be his slave ; but out 
of his breast, nearest his heart, to be nourished, 
cherished, loved; his equal, his companion, his 
counterpart. But it took God to think such a 
thought, and write such a record. It is like Him 
to have done things that way. 

The Bible conception of two worlds is grand — 
the universe, partly seen, partly unseen; partly 
temporal and transitory, passing away, taking 
different shapes and forms, waste going on and 
replenishment; partly unseen, invisible, eternal, 
immutable. Life is a ladder. Like any ladder, it 
rests on things below, and reaches to things above; 
and, as you go up, you leave things, below, farther 
down and approach nearer to things at the top. 
Life's ladder rests on material things that may be 
tested by the five senses; we mount one rung, and 

meet what can be tested only by four senses out 

220 



The Thoughts of God 

of the five ; another rung, and we meet what can be 
tested by only three ; then by two ; still another rung, 
and we find what can be tested only by one, like 
light, which appeals to the eye, but not to the 
hearing, touch, taste, or smell, yet it belongs to the 
material realm. Still higher, we come to verities 
that pertain to the universe and have to do with 
matter, yet which no sense ever has discerned. 
Life was never seen, heard, touched, tasted, or 
smelt. Yet, do you doubt it? What makes the 
difference between a living body and a corpse? 
The corpse has the same features, eyes and ears, 
hands and feet; but there is something in a living 
body that is not in a corpse. Put a living human 
being in a metallic casket and seal it up air-tight. 
You have scarce done it before something has fled 
which you cannot keep in with walls nor keep out 
by locked doors. Nobody knows what it is, but it 
is real. What the Bible teaches is that, as we go 
from this lower sphere up this ladder of life, we 
come to an unseen and invisible realm, far greater, 
grander, more important than what the senses 
perceive; and that God has given us other senses 
by which to explore this invisible realm. In the 
fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we 
read of the "senses exercised to discern good and 
evil"— not physical senses, of course, which cannot 



God's Living Oracles 

discern good and evil, but another set of senses 
which are to be exercised upon intellectual and 
moral subjects. Faith is the sense of the invisible; 
hope is the sense of the future ; memory is the sense 
of the past; sensibility is the sense of moral at- 
traction and repulsion. Such are some of the 
senses God has given to explore the invisible world. 

Many other divine thoughts are found in this 
Book, and nowhere else. God's thoughts are not 
man's; they are above and often, also, contra- 
dictory to the ideas of man. 

What is man's notion of love? His love is 
guided by his liking. He loves what he thinks is 
lovable, and where advantage is to be got from 
loving, in the response of reciprocal affection. 
Man gives where he can get. How different God's 
love. He loves without reference to His likings, 
or He would never have loved sinners. He loves 
what is unlovable that He may make it lovable. 
He gives lavishly and infinitely, and gives the best 
He has to those from whom He receives nothing. 
Such is the difference between God's ways and 
man's ways. Man loves and gives for the sake of 
being loved and receiving gifts; God loves where 
He is not loved and never will be, and gives 
where He does not, and never will, receive. 

What is God's idea of greatness? **The king.s of 

222 



The Thoughts of God 

the nations exercise lordship over them, and they 
that are great exercise authority upon them; but 
it shall not be so among you (Matt, xx: 25. 
Luke XXII : 25.) . . ." Jesus, taking off His 
outer garments, and putting on the slave's apron, 
and girding Himself, took a basin of water and 
washed the disciples' feet, wiping them with the 
towel wherewith He was girded. The two most 
menial offices that could be performed by a 
Jew, were to unlatch the shoe and to wash the 
feet. Christ did not unlatch the shoes, because 
they had been left in the vestibule as the disciples 
had come into the banqueting room; the only 
other menial act He could do, to descend to the 
lowest depths of drudgery, was to wash their feet. 
The Creator of all worlds and creatures, washed the 
feet of His own disciples. Is there anything like 
that outside the Bible? 

Take the idea of incarnation. God, made flesh, 
and coming to dwell among men, does not take 
His place where He belongs, at the top of the 
social pyramid, but at the bottom. He associates 
Himself with the poorest and lowest and least of 
earth. Christ never owned a square foot of terri- 
tory on the world He made. He was the object of 
charity, even the clothes He wore no doubt being 

the gift of women that ministered to Him of their 

223 



God's Living Oracles 

substance. He had nothing, yet He owned every- 
thing. What conceptions these are! And when 
Christ died for man, it was not after a respectable, 
not to say, honorable fashion, like a general, falling 
in battle. The Creator and Redeemer of mankind 
was crucified between thieves, having been first 
exchanged for a robber and murderer. Such is 
the unique and paradoxical character of God's 
ideas and ways. 

How, again, infinite simplicity of method is com- 
bined with infinite sublimity of teaching. Take 
God's account of creation: "In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth." Then put 
alongside it Mr. Herbert Spencer's final defini- 
tion of evolution: 

"Evolution is an integration of matter and con- 
comitant dissipation of motion; during which the 
matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent 
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; 
and during which the retained motion undergoes 
a parallel transformation." 

Suppose the Bible were written in that style. 

Even the metaphysicians themselves could not 

understand it. What kind of a book would that 

be to put into the hands of little children to learn 

the way of life? "Heterogeneity," "homogeneity" 

and "parallel transformation!" God is divinely 

224 



The Thoughts of God 

simple. "To as many as received Him, to them 
gave He power to become the sons of God, even 
to them that beHeve on His name." BeHeving, 
then, is receiving — the simplest act of which we are 
capable. "God so loved the world, that He gave 
His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
in Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." If God gave, all man has to do is to take. 
There are seven words in the Bible used to express 
this initial act of faith, and they all convey one 
idea — reception: Look, hear, taste, take, come, 
trust, choose. To take in a prospect, we look; to 
take in music, we hear; to take in food, we taste; 
to receive a gift, we take; to take in a territory, we 
come, or walk; to take a friend, we trust; to take a 
resolve, we choose. So easy to be understood, 
that the simplest can grasp all that is necessary. 
Not only God's infinity, sublimity, and divine 
originality, but His simplicity, are impressed on 
the Scriptures indelibly. 

These are Living Oracles. His vitality is in- 
breathed into this Book, and man cannot destroy 
it. A colossal statue of "Liberty" stands in New 
York Harbour, and every night the birds, dashing 
against the lantern, beat themselves into insen- 
sibility, and fall at its base; and, in the morning, 

heaps of carcasses are found there, dead. But the 

225 



God's Living Oracles 

light shines on, quenchless, serene. Satan's birds 
of the night beat against God's light, threatening to 
put it out and leave the world in darkness, but they 
are like waves that beat against the rocks only to 
cleave themselves in twain. . As well attempt to 
put out the stars or the sun with a watering pot. 
When all those who oppose and assault the Word of 
God have gone into the darkness of perpetual night, 
that Light will still shine on, and many a poor 
mariner will by it be guided to the harbour of ever- 
lasting rest, 



326 



CHAPTER XII 

The Bible and God's Ethics 

A lofty mountain-peak commands a whole 
horizon, but the human vision can take in but 
a part of that horizon circle, at one view. Hence, 
a new outlook and in a new direction is possible 
from the same commanding point of prospect. 
Again we recur to that leading utterance in the 
Prophecy of Isaiah: 

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are 
your ways My ways," saith the Lord. "For as 
the heavens are high above the earth, so are My 
ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts 
higher than your thoughts. For as the rain 
Cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and 
retumeth not thither, but watereth the earth, and 
maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give 
seed to the sower, and bread to the eater; so shall 
My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth : it 
shall not return unto Me void; but it shall accom- 
plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the 
thing whereto I sent it." And in the last verse: 

"Instead of the thorn, shall come up the fir tree, and 

227 



God's Living Oracles 

instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree; 
and it (that is, this transformation of the soil of 
society and of the human heart) shall be to the 
Lord for a name (that is, a 'fame' or 'reputation') 
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut oif." 

We have already seen, how, from the intellec- 
tual side, the Bible reveals God's thoughts, as infin- 
itely above man's conceptions, and His ways of 
working contrary to as well as superior to man's 
methods. 

In the moral aspect of the Bible, also, God's 
conceptions are infinitely above man's ethics, and 
His moral and spiritual ways of working are utterly 
beyond man's philosophy. The Bible has proved 
also the great moral dynamic, the one divinely 
potent force for the regeneration of human beings 
and the transformation of human society. 

This Scripture afiirms, what is very striking, a 

complete moral revolution through God's Word. 

"Thorn and thistles" were the original marks of 

the curse: "Thorns and thistles shall the earth 

bring forth unto thee," was the sign of man's fall, 

which was to be seen and shown in the very ground 

on which he trod. There is an obvious reference 

to this here. Instead of these signs of the curse, 

there shall be tokens of blessings. Instead of 

thorns and thistles, which are vexatious, harmful, 

228 



The Ethics of God 

noxious, shall come up the fir tree — an evergreen — 
the myrtle, graceful and fragrant — a refreshing 
shade tree and a beautiful ornament to the garden. 
That is to say, what is hurtful, offensive, destruc- 
tive, shall be displaced by what is beautiful, fruit- 
ful, helpful. This moral miracle is to stand in all 
history for the establishment of God's reputation 
as a God that doeth wonders ; and, whatever other 
signs may not continue, this shall be His everlast- 
ing sign. The deaf may no longer hear, the blind 
no longer see, the lepers no longer be cleansed, 
and the dead be no longer raised up, as in the time 
of Christ. These miracles may have had some 
special mission in the authenticating of Christ's 
claims, at the beginning; but, whatever other 
miracles are not continuous and continual, this 
moral miracle, God says, shall not be cut off. As 
long as the Word of God is preached, these moral 
and spiritual transformations shall attend and 
follow to the end of time. 

We look first at some of the moral features of 
the Oracles of God; and, then, ascending to the 
higher level, consider some of its spiritual features, 
which belong to a more exalted realm. 

That which most closely touches morality, is 

Law, and we, therefore, glance first at God's system 

of legislation as laid down in the Book, brevity 

229 



God's Living Oracles 

compelling only a hint here and there, skirting the 
borders of the subject. 

The Ten Words, known as the Decalogue, sum- 
marize God's moral law: "God spake all these 
words." There is singular completeness in the 
moral law: Two tables, four commandments 
being assigned to the first, six commandments to 
the second. And the order as well as the com- 
pleteness is very noticeable. 

(i.) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.'* 
No other deity to be tolerated in the presence of 
Jehovah, Who is to stand absolutely alone, — no 
competitor or rival, no division of interest or 
worship. 

(2.) "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image." God is not to be worshipped by the aid 
of visible representations, whether furnished by 
the art of the painter or of the sculptor and graver. 
The Bible is firmly set against all visible impersona- 
tions or representations of Deity, and we ought to 
understand that fact, for this command is violated 
even in thousands of Christian homes, and so-called 
Christian Churches. These pictures and images of 
God are all contrary to the second commandment, 
because, whenever He is represented thus, the 
tendency is for the imagination to stop with the 

image, so that, instead of worshipping the Living 

230 



The Ethics of God 

God, man pays homage to a material human 
representation. There is a further danger, — for 
this leads directly to grosser forms of idolatry. 
The worship of the golden calf was not meant as 
idolatry ; the calf was set up as a representation of 
Jehovah.* The gods afterward brought in from 
Tyre and Sidon and Phoenicia, — Baal and Astarte, 
were foreign deities — idols proper. But the former 
prepared the way for the latter, and it is always so. 

(3.) "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord 
thy God in vain," — even the name of God to be 
held in holy reverence, and not spoken needlessly, 
vainly, carelessly, for His name represents His 
nature — Himself. 

(4.) "Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it 
holy" — Setting a fence of restriction around 
sacred time, that man may have a chance to look 
away from objects near by to the far horizons, 
from what is temporal to what is eternal, and from 
things human to things divine. Some would try 
to make it appear that the Sabbath was a Mosaic 
institution and has no longer any obligation; but 
the weekly day of rest is one of two things that 
were ordained in, and have come down from, a 
sinless Eden. The Sabbath was before Moses, 
before Adam; and the only other relic of the 

* Exodus XXXII : 5-8. 
231 



God's Living Oracles 

primitive Paradise is marriage — ideal marriage. 
As well make marriage a matter of Mosaic legisla- 
tion as the Sabbath law, since both of them were 
thus instituted and ordained for man in Eden, 
before the fall. 

The second great table of the Law enjoins six 
duties : 

($.) "Honour thy father and thy mother . . ." 
There is a period in human life when the only God 
the child knows is the father and mother : not being 
able yet to grasp the idea of Deity, the parent 
stands between the child and the conception of 
God, and, if the child learns to honour and obey the 
father and mother, afterward, when the conception 
of Deity dawns on the understanding, it is com- 
paratively easy to transfer filial obedience and love 
from the human parent to the divine, from the 
father on earth to the Father in Heaven. One 
reason why there is so little piety, even in co-called 
Christian families, is because parental discipline 
and childlike obedience are so rare. Children are 
not only outgrowing all obedience to parental 
authority, but many of them never knew what it 
was, and could not outgrow it. A most shameful 
state of things is this; and it saps the foundations 
of all human wellbeing. If there is no obedience 

in the family, there will be no true obedience in the 

232 



The Ethics of God 

State or Church. Lawlessness in all human 
society naturally follows lawlessness in the house- 
hold. 

The commandments of the second table follow 
a descending series from the most necessary and 
important to those of subordinate character; or 
from the general to the specific. 

(6.) "Thou shalt not kill." Life is the first inter- 
est to be guarded, because, if life is not protected, 
nothing else can be. 

(7 .) "Thou shalt not commit adultery. ' ' Next to 
life is family purity, else how shall the child know 
even who is his own father? ''Ipso facto'' the 
marriage relation is dissolved by marital infidelity, 
and such infidelity is just as ruinous, and just as 
desecrating on the part of the man as on the part 
of the woman. Away with these lax notions that 
wink at sin in the man, and condemn it in the 
woman ! 

(8.) "Thou shalt not steal." Next to the guards 
put about life and marital purity are those about 
property. 

(9.) "Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thy neighbour. ' ' His reputation is also to be guarded 
as one of his most sacred possessions. Shakes- 
peare sagaciously inveighs against robbing one of 
his "good name." 

233 



God's Living Oracles 

(lo.) "Thou Shalt not covet," or "Thou shalt 
not lust." Lust covers all irregular, all abnormal 
desires. At the end of the commandments, at 
last we get down to that which constitutes the root 
of all crime — unholy, inordinate desire. 

What a moral compendium of duty, and all the 
ten, reducible to two! The first of all command- 
ments is 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and 
strength. And the second is like unto it, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Upon these 
two commandments hang all the law and the 
prophets," is our Lord's own commentary; and 
even the two are further reducible to one. "Love 
worketh no ill" to God or man, and therefore, 
*'love is the fulfilling of the law." There is no 
other moral code like that. Individual hints may 
be found similar to it, but the morality of the Bible 
is an indigenous plant, in its own soil — not an 
exotic, out of its native atmosphere and surround- 
ings. 

The moral law implies moral administration, and 
so the Word of God teaches the doctrine of God's 
Providence, which is set forth, once for all, in the 
Book of Esther. All the great principles of God's 
Providence are laid down in this book, such as these : 



234 



The Ethics of God 

(i.) There is a hand behind human affairs that 
shapes and moulds them. 

(2.) That hand forbears for the time being, so 
that adversity sometimes comes to the good, and 
prosperity to the wicked. 

(3.) That hand distributes the ultimate awards 
of virtue and righteousness in happiness, and the 
ultimate awards of wickedness and vice in misery. 

(4.) That hand weaves the smallest incidental 
matters into the fabric of Divine Purpose, — such as 
the sleeplessness of the king, and the unwilling- 
ness of Mordecai to pay homage to Haman. 

(5.) That hand administers poetic retribution, so 
associated with and correspondent with sin, that 
there is no mistaking the hand of the God of 
Recompenses — ^witness Haman's death on the very 
scaffold he had prepared for Mordecai. 

(6.) God's hand does not compel human action. 
Providence is not fatali m. God ordains, but He 
does not violate human freedom, which is among 
the things decreed. When Esther went into the 
presence of Ahasuerus, it was by her own choice 
and on her own responsibility; she went praying, 
and with the support of her own maidens. It was 
her own act, yet according to God's decree. 

(7.) Last of all, the hand that guides affairs is a 
hidden hand — does not appear visibly, manifestly; 

235 



God's Living Oracles 

the effects are seen, but not the cause. Hence, 
while the name of God is not found in Esther, the 
workings of Almighty God are there, not only seen 
by faith, but may be found even by the ungodly. 
No other teaching on Providence is necessary after 
this one book is mastered, for no new additional 
principle in the divine philosophy of administration 
is introduced afterward. 

The Bible teaches also a Final Judgment — an 
ultimate adjudication of affairs of government. 
The adjustment of sin and penalty is not always 
complete in this world, for the scales of divine 
judgment do not hang evenly, this side of the veil; 
only beyond are they seen to be in perfect equi- 
librium. 

It is a sublime conception of judgment which the 
Bible contains: 

He is a God of — 

(i .) Infinite knowledge, so that nothing can be 
hid from His eye. 

(2.) Infinite power, so that nothing can escape 
His pursuit. 

(3.) Omnipresence, so that there is no part of the 
universe where His knowledge and power do not 
penetrate. 

(4.) Infinite justice, so that He cannot be bribed, 

236 



The Ethics of God 

or blinded ; nor can any influence pervert or prevent 
His judgments. 

($.) Yet, after all, His wrath is as holy as all else 
about Him. Many do not like to talk about God's 
wrath; they avoid it as though it were a kind of 
blotch on the divine character. The wrath of 
God is just as much a perfection as His love, for 
there is nothing that is not perfect in Him. Wrath 
in God is not man's passion elevated to a divine 
sphere and level. This is a total misconception. 
Wrath in God is not a passion at all ; it is rather a 
principle. It is not variable, capricious, change- 
able; it is eternal, and immutable, like everything 
else in Him. 

When a magnetic needle is set on its pivot it 
swings toward the pole. If approached at one 
end with another magnet, it attracts; approached 
at the other, it repels; by the same law it attracts 
at one end and repels at the other. So the same 
attribute of divine benevolence attracts holiness 
at one pole, and repels wickedness at the other — 
the same perfection in both cases, with two oppo- 
site manifestations. This is the God of the Bible — 
an infinitely perfect God. 

God's method of reformation is totally different 
from man's. Man, whenever he sees an evil, 
strikes at it; but when God sees an evil, He does 

237 



God's Living Oracles 

not always strike at that particular form of wrong- 
doing: He puts a lever underneath the whole 
character, and elevates its whole level, because to 
suppress one form of evil is to give a chance for 
another to break out in some other form elsewhere. 
Social evils abounded in the time of Jesus Christ — 
polygamy, unchastity, infanticide, capricious 
divorce, bloody and brutal games ; wars, rapacious 
and cruel ; death and punishment by torture, caste 
and slavery. Our Lord mentions and deals 
specifically with but one of these, and that was 
capricious divorce. Yet His teaching puts beneath 
all things evil that pertain to society, a lever 
greater than that of which Archimedes dreamed, 
and overturns them all. 

Again, human reformers begin with the outside, 
and try to work toward the inside, but do not often 
succeed. God begins with the inside, and lets the 
outside take care of itself, beginning not with the 
reformation of external character, but the regen- 
eration of the heart. "Out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of the 
heart ''flow the issues of life." Hence, God's 
method of reformation. 

Notice also God's idea of character. There is a 

kind of moral spectrum, similar to the solar 

spectrum with its colours. There are seven virtues 

238 



The Ethics of God 

inculcated in the Bible, which, together, comprise 
this whole spectrum of moral character. 

First of all, truth, because truth is the basis of 
all the rest. There can be no high, noble character 
if there be no truth. Sincerity is at the bottom of 
all pure and true development. 

Faith, hope, love — the peculiar trinity of graces 
referred to in I Cor. xiii. 

Humility, the unconscious grace. They who 
think themselves htmible, never are. This takes 
the form of reverence, also, which is the very soul 
of worship. 

Patience, the enduring grace, which gives per- 
manence to all the rest. 

Mercy, like unto God in the peculiar scope and 
nobility of its forgiveness. How complete this 
category ! 

Truth leads all the rest. The Bible is in eternal 
antagonism to anything of the nature of pretension 
and hypocrisy. It knows nothing of "policy," and 
gives no countenance whatever to compromise. 
What is right, is to be done ; what is wrong, to be 
let alone. 

In "Jane Eyre," Charlotte Bronte gives a very 
fine touch of satire. She makes Mr. Brocklehurst 
to say: "I have a little boy, younger than you, who 



239 



God's Living Oracles 

knows six Psalms by heart ; and when you ask him 
which he would rather have, a gingerbread nut to 
eat, or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: 'Oh, the 
the verse of a Psalm.' 'Angels sing Psalms,' says 
he; 'I wish to be a little angel here below;' He 
then gets two nuts in recompense of his infant 
piety." This boy found Psalm liking better 
policy than cake liking, for appetite got but one 
gingerbread nut, and piety got two. Thus the 
author ran her stiletto through the fair exterior of 
thousands of lives that are regulated by nothing 
but policy, and are very pious, not on principle, 
but for the sake of the gingerbread nuts. But the 
Bible knows no such ethical farce. It is the most 
transparent book in its moral teaching that was 
ever given to the human race, and it teaches men 
to be transparent. That Greek word for "sin- 
cerity" means what can bear the searching expo- 
sure of the sun's rays, what can stand being held 
up to view, disclosing its innermost self. 

What is the Bible idea of humility, for which the 
Greek language offered no proper word ? the only 
one available, expressing fawning servility, as of 
one who, in bondage to a tyrannical master, gets 
down and licks his feet. Many people confound 
humility with humiliation, which is different. 



240 



The Ethics of God 

Humiliation is conscious; humility, unconscious.* 
Love is the crowning grace. When faith is lost 
in sight, and hope in fruition, love will be the 
reigning spirit about the throne of God — the 
ethical force of gravitation in God's moral universe. 
What is love? It is the divine principle of life, 
the royal law, of preferring somebody else to one's 
self, self-giving for the sake of others. Love, 
therefore, surrenders self to God with supreme 
preference for Him; and surrenders self to man — 
yielding one's own interests in order to promote 
that of others. Love is, therefore, the law of life 
that gives self to God, first of all, and, secondarily, 
to man. 

Such a law of love allows no room for a trace of 
resentment. A story is told of General Robert E. 
Lee, that when at West Point there was a rival 
for honours, who hated Lee because he was his 
superior in scholarship. Years after, when both 
were in political life, Lee was asked his opinion of 
his former rival as a candidate for a certain post. 
He said: "He is a man of fine qualities and large 
acquisitions; I think he will adorn the position." 
^'Evidently you do not know what he has been 

* One of Dr. Lyman Beecher's sons, entering the ministry, preached 
for his father. He tried to make a splurge and succeeded. On his way 
home he said: "That was a very poor effort; I am much humbled, 
father." "Fudge,"* he said, "you are only humiliated." 

241 



God's Living Oracles 

saying against you," was the rejoinder. He 

quietly answered : "I was asked, not what is his opm- 

ion of me, but what is my opinion of him." Such 

magnanimity is seldom known except by those 

who have been touched with the transforming 

power of the divine Spirit of love. Love that 

worketh no ill to one's neighbor, harbours no ill will 

even to one's enemy. 

The Bible furnishes a divinely perfect ethical 

standard. It is common to say, in apology for the 

lax doctrine and notions of biblical inspiration, 

now permeating even the churches, that the Bible 

is not needed as an infallible guide, because man 

has reason and conscience. But there is the more 

reason why we need the Bible as a final arbiter in 

ethics. A watch may keep good time, but needs 

to be corrected by the chronometer, and even the 

chronometer by the Pole star, for "underneath the 

stars nothing goes exactly right." Conscience and 

reason are like watches, and even the communis 

consensus of believers is at best only like the 

chronometer; but he who would be absolutely 

certain must look up higher, to God's Polar Star. 

God gives us in his Word an infallible standard, 

correct, accurate, trustworthy; to give up its 

infallibility is, in a sense, to surrender the Bible 

altogether as an ultimate standard; and no 

242 



The Ethics of God 

celestial pole star is left us to correct the variations 
of the moral magnetic needle ! 

Spiritual things belong to even a higher plane 
than the moral. The Bible conception of the 
holiness of God may be taken as an example. 
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and 
canst not look on iniquity." (Habakkuk 1:13). 
What a conception of a character, absolutely 
immaculate, impeccable. "God cannot be tempted 
with evil," (James 1:13). The word used here 
is a striking word. It means that, as touching 
evil, God is "simple," as we say of an innocent 
little child — too simple to do evil. He has no 
experimental conception of evil, which perhaps 
was impossible to the divine nature, practically, 
before the incarnation, but we know little about 
such mysteries as these. 

We have already referred to love as a law and its 
general meaning; but love, as it is found in perfec- 
tion in God, is beyond man's conception. Ruskin 
writes of pools, outside of manufacturing towns, 
where muddy water, sand, clay and soot are all 
mixed together. Let the sun have time and what 
will it do ? It will take out the clay and make of it 
a sapphire ; it will turn the sand into an opal ; the 
soot into a diamond; and the water into crystal 

snowflakes. God's love shines on the filthy pool 

243 



God's Living Oracles 

of the human heart, and, if it responds to His shin- 
ing, that love will change the pool into a paradise 
— transforming the very nature of the man. This 
love of God is the moral miracle, the wonder of the 
ages. This is the dynamic force that trans- 
forms character and conduct into His own likeness. 
What manner of man it makes! Men that have 
holiness like unto God, a new and divine nature by 
a new birth from above. God coming down and 
taking up man into Himself; somewhat as in 
nature, the upper kingdoms reach down and take 
up what belongs to the lower into themselves — as 
the vegetable takes up the mineral, and the animal, 
the vegetable. So God's love reaches down from 
heaven to take man up into Himself, and give him 
His own new nature, with its new affinities. 

Rev. J. H. Jowett says, "Whenever man tries 
to make a social classification, it is perpendicular — 
lower, middle, and upper strata, with half a dozen 
intermediate layers. When God makes a classifi- 
cation, it is horizontal, right and left: 'He that is 
not with Me, is against Me.' " It is either yea or 
nay ; good or bad ; and differences in the degrees of 
unholiness and sinfulness look to God, at His dis- 
tance, and with His perfection, more insignificant 
than the differences in elevation on the surface of 

the earth would look at the distance of the sun. 

244 



The Ethics of God 

God's classification is into sinners and saints; 
wicked or righteous; friends of God, or foes of God; 
and there is no intermediate ground. No man can 
'stand on the fence' in his relation to Him: 
he is with the devil or with Jesus Christ. It is a 
delusive idea that there is any negative or neutral 
ground, in the universe, as to moral and spiritual 
questions and issues. 

A new relation is disclosed in the Bible between 
obedience, faith and knowledge. In the scientific 
sphere, and in the natural world, men believe what 
they know and understand; in the spiritual world, 
men know and understand what they believe. In 
the scientific and natural world, men obey no 
further than they understand; in the spiritual 
world, men understand no further than they obey: 
"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
doctrine." God as a teacher follows His own 
unique methods. The pupils in his school are 
never sure of a second lesson till they have learned 
and practiced the first. Men may go through a 
college, and come out, knowing scarce more than 
when they went in; but on God's ladder it is only 
by stepping on one rung that one is able to ascend 
to the next, and so, by putting into practice each 
lesson taught, rise higher in the knowledge and 
revelation of God. ' * His ways are not men 's ways. ' ' 

245 



tjod*s Living Oracles 

The gi*and sevenfold consummation of all the 
Redemption plan is given in the twenty-second 
chapter of Revelation : 

"And there shall be no more curse." — Perfect 
sinlessness. 

"And the throne of God and of the Lamb shall 
be in it." — Perfect authority. 

"And His servants shall serve Him." — Perfect 
obedience. 

"And they shall see His face." — Perfect com- 
munion. 

"And His name shall be in their foreheads." — 
Perfect consecration. 

"And there shall be no night there." — Perfect 
blessedness. 

"And they shall reign forever and ever." — Perfect 
glory. 

What visions of such sevenfold perfection are 
found any where outside of the Oracles of God! 

This is a favorable point for indicating some 
practical thoughts and final conclusions. 

(i.) Ruskin finely hints in his "Open Sesame," 
that it is the privilege of a reader to enter into the 
inmost thought of an author. Hence the democracy 
of the printed page. If one would get access to the 
great and notable of earth, he will find a thousand 

246 



" ^ The Ethics of God 

difficulties and obstacles between him and them, — 
distance, seclusion, locked doors, other engage- 
ments — hindrances, purposely put in the way; but 
whosoever wants to hold communion with God, 
finds in his Word an open door. He may enter into 
the secret chambers of God if he searches His Word : 
"The meek will He guide in judgment; and the 
meek will He teach His way;" "He will show 
them the secrets of His covenant." This Book 
opens the door into the very presence chamber of 
God and secures audience with Him ; and those who 
reverently approach, and who are willing to bow 
low enough to enter the low doorway, will find 
themselves in the palace of the King. 

(2.) The greatest sign of the quality of any book is 
the residuum it leaves behind, as it flows through 
the mind. As in streams where sulphur aboimds, 
the green deposit is on the stones ; and where iron 
abounds, the red hue is in the bed ; and where gold 
is found, its lustre is on the very sand; so when a 
book flows through the mind, the supreme testi- 
mony to its quality is what it leaves behind. Is it 
vice or virtue; is it magnanimity, or pusilanimity ; 
is it carnality or spirituality? The greatest proof, 
perhaps, that the Bible is the Book of God is that it 
leaves as residuum the gold of heaven, where it 

flows. 

847 



God's Living Oracles 

Here is a challenge to all infidels. One of the 
greatest mysteries in this world is this Book, like 
which there is nothing else. How did that Book 
come to be? The wisest cannot possibly account 
for it. There is nothing else like it on the earth ; 
it is evidently a foreign product. No philosophy 
has ever accounted for it except by its own account 
of itself. But it is a fact, which, if human philos- 
ophy cannot account for it, even human philosophy 
must admit to be a fact — and the great dynamic 
force of the moral universe. 

When the mutineers of the Bounty landed on 
Pitcaim Island they had only two books in their 
possession, one a prayer book and the other a Bibte; 
and there was not a converted man or woman 
among them. Adams, the leader, read that Bible, 
foimd Christ in it, became a transformed man, and, 
with that as the entire statute book of his little 
colony, that community became likewise trans- 
formed. 

When Johnson went down to Sierra Leone in 
1816, he found a promiscuous lot of savages, taken 
out of the holds of slave ships, and put there as on a 
sort of dumping ground for thieves and robbers 
and social refuse. Within seven years, the native 
converts had put up a stone church that would 
hold a thousand; their children were in Christian 

248 



The Ethics of God 

schools ; they themselves were gathered in Christ- 
ian congregations, and not a relic of the former 
orgies and revels of their licentious heathen life 
remained. 

A most godly man recently died in London, of a 
most painful disease. The surgeon that waited 
upon him was an infidel when he first went into his 
bedroom. A little while before the death of this 
patient a friend said to him: "I wish you had the 
faith of that man in your heart!" Said he, "I 
have. I was an infidel once, but I could not re- 
main an infidel in the presence of that deathbed.'* 

A well-known English clergyman had a daugh- 
ter of sixteen, gay, giddy, thoughtless. She was 
brought to Jesus Christ, and from that moment 
the Word of God became the food of her heart, and 
she could not be restrained from Bible study. One 
day she said: "Father, won't you read with me?" 
They turned to the Bible, the one book she wanted, 
and opened at the twenty-second chapter of Reve- 
lation. They read alternately , till they came to the 
verse, "And they shall see His face," and she sud- 
denly departed to see His face. 

The Bible is thus perpetually proving itself the 

great dynamic. There is no other like it, and when 

infidels will show us any other book that compares 

with it in moral and spiritual conceptions, and 

249 



God's Living Oracles 

dynamic power, it will be time enough to swerve 
from allegiance to it, and consider whether it is 
worth while to give it up; but, till then, let us stand 
by The Oracles of God. 

(3.) The conclusion forces itself upon us that this 
is the first among all books, viewed from whatever 
side, whether as to the inspiring thoughts it con- 
tains, its lessons on morality and piety, or its 
incentives to duty and self-sacrifice. No where 
else will such heroic unselfishness be found, both 
taught in the loftiest forms and exemplified in the 
most perfect life. Men have drawn from this book 
for centuries inspiration for personal living and 
public teaching, and it is still the one deep inex- 
haustible well of salvation and instruction. The 
greatest of modem Englishmen modeled his style 
upon it ; the most distinguished of modern orators 
drew from it his inspiration ; the 1 ate laureate poet of 
Britain learned in its school the art of poesy; the 
foremost of theologians discovered in it the mater- 
ials for their systems; and, above all, God-like 
character — the noblest cathedral structure ever 
reared among men — ^finds both its living stones in its 
quarry and its pattern in its mount of vision. By 
it human lives have been transfigured, and even 
worldly society unconsciously and unwillingly 



250 



The Ethics of God 

revolutionized. While other books inform, and 
some few reform, this one Book transforms. 

(4.) The Bible is not only first but last of all books 
— Alpha and Omega — in the alphabet of the ages. 
It outlives all the ancient literature, alone inde- 
structible and imperishable. God is its authority, 
and its lifetime is Eternity. Immortality is stamped 
upon it. Burned in a thousand fires of persecu- 
tion, every effort has been made not only to destroy 
it as a book, but to exterminate it as a moral force 
among men, to blot out its record even from their 
memories. But it not only survives, but, like the 
Incarnate Word, has the keys of death and hades; 
it multiplies as its enemies seek to annihilate it. 
To-day, after eighteen centuries of antagonism, it 
is the widest spread and read of all books, the best 
known, translated into over four hundred tongues, 
and found wherever man opens the door to a new 
civilization. 

The Bible is like the banyan tree; its very 
branches bend down and take root. It spreads 
over whole continents, and could not be eradicated 
without tearing up the very soil of society. When 
Sir David Dalyrimple, whose mind and culture fitted 
him for such a task, undertook to find how far the 
New Testament had embedded itself in the litera- 
ture of the first three centuries, he found nearly 

251 



God's Living Oracles 

ev^ry verse. Where there is such pervasiveness, 
there must be power. To-day it is estimated that 
one-third of all our current literature treats of it 
directly, as in commentaries and like books, 
written to elucidate its contents; and another third 
indirectly touches it by treating of Church history, 
Christian biography, mission enterprise and kindred 
topics. Of the remaining third, it may be safely 
said that a large part of it in some form is moulded 
or affected by the Bible, though only written to 
assault it. 

(5.) These are thus God's Living Oracles. The 
Word of God is powerful because it is quick — alive 
—living and life-giving. It **liveth and abideth 
forever." It is a mirror, but such a mirror as the 
retina of the eye with its network of living nerves. 
It is a seed, but a seed that hides in its heart the 
vital principle of God's life, yielding, wherever 
sown, a harvest of souls into life eternal. It is a 
sword, but with power to pierce to the dividing 
asunder of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and 
discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. It 
is a living counsellor,* wisely answering inquiries 
and solving practical problems — the only true liv- 
ing oracle, that without resorting to a deceptive 
ambiguity, solves our perplexities. 

* Psalm cxix: 24. 
252 



The Ethics of God 

A strange, mysterious life pervades this Book, 
which makes it not only an inexplicable mystery, 
but an indestructible book. It is also life giving. 
Its living waters make everything to live, wherever 
this river of God cometh. The living Spirit of 
God here speaks to the responsive spirit of man. 
And so down through the ages this Book continues 
to go, a mighty miracle worker, forever undying in 
itself, and carrying to the nations a message and a 
power which are both divine. 

In bringing these chapters to a conclusion, there 
is one position that affects not only the whole 
argument, but is intimately linked with all rational 
conviction, both as to the inspired verities of the 
Word of God and the deity and atoning work of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. It must be remembered that to 
demand mathematical proof upon moral questions 
is absurd, since mathematical proof concerns the 
science of quantity, and moral proof admits of no 
demonstration stronger or more convincing than 
what is called moral probability. In other words, 
there are many things that cannot be demon- 
strated except on the grounds of high probability; 
yet we have no hesitation in accepting such con- 
clusions, though they are not susceptible of mathe- 
matical demonstration. 

This fact, however, should never affect the 

253 



God's Living Oracles 

security of our confidence in the certainties of our 
holy faith. It has long been a settled and admitted 
canon of philosophy, that, whenever a hypothesis is 
found which proves adequate to meet all the facts 
of the case, all the factors of the problem, it is 
safe to adopt it as the accurate solution of the diffi- 
culty. Further than this, if a hypothesis which 
does not meet and explain all the facts for which 
explanation is sought, yet serves to unravel the 
mystery better and more satisfactorily than any 
other, it is to be held fast as, at least, an ap- 
proximate solution, until a better and more perfect 
solution is suggested. 

This was the exact method whereby Johann 
Kepler, one of the greatest astronomers of all ages, 
in the i6th century solved some of the most diffi- 
cult problems of astronomy. Up to his day, the 
character of the planetary orbits, with the kindred 
questions of their comparative areas and times of 
revolution, were unsettled and perplexing prob- 
lems. For years he attentively studied these great 
questions, and made and applied eighteen suc- 
cessive hypotheses to their solution — as a lock- 
smith would successively apply as many keys to 
the unlocking of some complicated door. At last, 
it occurred to him to suppose the planets to move in 
ellipses rather than in circular orbits, the sun 

254 



The Ethics of God 

being one of the foci of the ellipse. This hypoth- 
esis was found to be perfectly reconcilable with all 
observed facts and phenomena. His enthusiasm 
was unbounded, and he exclaimed, "I am thinking, 
O Almighty God, Thy thoughts after Thee!" He 
saw that God had waited for thousands of years 
for an accurate observer to explain these phenom- 
ena. He then began to experiment until he dis- 
covered a second law, namely, that the radius- vector 
sweeps over equal areas in equal times. Then he 
discovered his third law, but only after twenty-two 
years of vigorou application, namely — that the 
square of the periodic time is proportional to the 
cube of the mean distance. Thus, upon the prin- 
ciple of what is called adequate hypothesis, he made 
these great astronomical discoveries of the laws 
and principles of planetary and stellar motion, and 
determined the mean distances of the planets from 
the sun, and their respective rates of revolution. 
Upon such questions as these there can be no 
scientific certainty, but, at most, only a high 
degree of probability. But, ever since his day, 
these explanations, known as Kepler's three great 
laws, have been accepted as the truth, even by 
scientific men, without any hesitation or even 
doubt, because his hypothesis proved adequate to 

unlock the doors of the heavens. 

255 



God's Living Oracles 

There is a great mystery investing the Old 
Testament prophecies, and the New Testament 
histories. The greatest of all moral and spiritual 
phenomena is the person of the Son of God, the 
Saviour of men. For these great mysteries, there is 
but one adequate hypothesis, but one key that 
unlocks the door to this Temple of Truth. That 
hypothesis supposes the Bible to be a divinely in- 
spired book, in every part, bearing the impress of 
divine intelligence and wisdom; that holy men of 
old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, 
as the mouthpiece of God, the only true Speaker — 
that Omniscience communicated to them an 
accurate forecast of future events, and that He 
who came as the fulfilment of all this great body 
of prophecy was none other than the Son of God as 
well as the Son of man — identical with man in His 
humanity, identical with the Father in His char- 
acter and attributes, history and destiny. 

When that hypothesis is accepted and adopted, 
the mystery of the Old and New Testaments is 
adequately unravelled and explained; above all, 
the mystery of the God-Man finds its only satis- 
factory solution. If that hypothesis be rejected, 
we are left in inextricable difficulty. When one 
has lived in the atmosphere of certain conviction, 

under the power of a deep persuasion that this book 

256 



The Ethics of God 

is the Word of God, that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God and the Saviour of men, amid all the disturbing 
doubts and perplexities of this age of negation and 
opposition, he calmly sings, like a lark in the midst 
of the storm: 

"Let all the forms that men devise 

Assault my faith with treacherous art, 
I'll call them vanity and lies, 

And bind Thy Gospel to my heart." 



257 



PUBLICATIONS Of 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., 

Publishers and Booksellers, 

33-37 EAST SEVENTEENTH ST., NEW YORK. 

GEORGE MiJLLER OF BRISTOL AND HIS WIT- 
NESS TO A PRAYER-HEARING GOD. By Rev. 
Arthur T. Pierson, D.D. With an Introduction by 
James Wright. Son-in-law and Successor in the work of 
George Miille*. Crown 8vo, cloth, 462 pages, illus* 
trated, $1.50. 

The latest and only complete life of George MOller. It contaiiM in brie» 
space the subst>nce of the 3000 pages of his Journal, the facts of his death 
and burial, the work after his decease, and all such items of interest as his 
son-in-law, other members of his family, helpers and intimate friends 
could supply during- the author's several months* residence at Bristol, 
MUller^s home. Mr. Wright says of Dr. Pierson and his book : 

"He had had exceptional opportunities for becoming intimately 
acquainted with Mr. Mliller. I knew that he could present not merely 
the history of the external facts and results of Mr. MUller^s life and 
labours, but could unfold with the ardour and force of comvicti»n the 
secret springs of that life and of those labours.^* 

" It is a joy to have so sympathetic a pen as Dr. Pierson's write the course 
of such a wonderful career. The book will be a revelation to thousands 
who read it, and will restore unfeigned faith in a prayer>hearing God to 

multitudes."— CA«rf A Economist. 

" If ever there was a miracle in modem times, it was the miraculous life- 
work of George MUller of Bristol. . . . We would by all means recom- 
mend Mr. Pierson's life of George Muller."— CA«rcA Standard, 

*• Mr. Muller's biography is a substantial contribution to the evidences 
of Christianity, as well as a grand inspiration to practical philanthropy.** 
—The Outlook. 

" One of the most remarkable accounts of a remarkable man that we 
have come across in a long while. The conversion of an almost hopelessly 
dissipated youth and the wonderful spiritual success and influence of his 
after-life are told m these 500 pages with cogent vividness and force.'*— 
Kansas City Journal. 

" The narrative and the facts themselves are remarkable.**— CA<V<c^ 
Evening Post. 

"Ab extraordinary narrative of an extraordinary Vd.t^^^-Ckicmf 
Chronicle* 

Sent, postpaid, on receipt oftheprice^ hy 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO., PUBLISHERS, 
33-37 B. 17th St., Union Sq. North, New York. 



THE MODERN MISSION 
CENTURY 

VIEWED AS A CYCLE 
OF DIVINE WORKING 

Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, D.D., 

Author of ''Geo, Miiller," *' New Acts of the 
Apostles ^^ etc. 

Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.50 net 

This is by all odds Dr. Pierson's strongest and most 
important work. It deals with the last century in the 
mission field. Its aim is not so much to give the 
annals of the century as to find the philosophy of its 
history — the centre about which all its events revolve. 
It studies the men and women, occurrences and devel- 
opments, as divinely appointed and adjusted to mission 
work. 

"Dr. Pierson has written this book with fulness of 
detail, yet with such a judicious grouping of his mate- 
rials and with so much fervor and enthusiasm as to 
make the reading of his narrative at once easy and 
inspiring. It is a noble and convincing record of 
Christian faith and achievement. " — Living Age. 

" A large personal element in copious illustrations drawn 
from the experiences of a multitude of men and women 
in the mission field imparts peculiar interest to this 
volume. " — Outlook. 

The Baker & Taylor Co., Publishers 

33-37 E. 17th Street, Union Square North, New York 



FEB 29 1904 



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